For several months now, my calendar has been filled up with almost daily slots dedicated to watching films.

There was a moment in time when I suddenly felt a pang of cultural deprivation. Somehow, I knew that I needed to begin a binge.

Books have not fallen by the wayside, but they have slowed down to a calm pace. Six months ago, such a pace would have had me anxious and panicking.

I am now open to allowing films to dictate my reading agenda on occasion. This meant that I had to come to Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

If you know anything about the subject matter, you go in with a certain protective wall up. Old school institutions for the “mentally ill” had all sorts of politics and Freudian drama, coupled with pain-inducing treatments and terrible living conditions.

Despite all that, you get got. You’re ready. You know what’s coming. But you still get got. It’s one of the very few truths of the human condition – if you get the chance to peer into someone’s soul, made bare and presented without social anxieties… it will be difficult not to grow to care for them.

They sit around the ward, playing cards. They’re not sure what the game really is or what they’re playing for. McMurphy deals. The boys play. Chief Bromden watches. There is no ill will in the air. All we know is that time has slowed down. As each card is flipped and lands on the table, a breath of fresh air passes through them. They have found someone who cares for them. In his own demented way, he cares for them.

It's a beautiful and poignant scene that makes you think about the power of human connection and the importance of looking beyond the surface.

The film and the book both explore these themes in a profound and moving way, leaving a lasting impression on the viewer and the reader alike.

One aspect that I find extremely interesting is that this book was initially published in 1962, preceding all the significant social and cultural upheavals that occurred during the latter part of the 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Strangely enough, it gives the impression that the setting and the characters already had a connection to that very change.

There are numerous memorable moments scattered throughout this book. At certain points, you might find these moments to be utterly ridiculous or uproariously hilarious. However, at other times, they can turn sad or even infuriating. The fact that a novel has the power to evoke such a wide range of emotions in just a few pages is truly remarkable. The characters are captivating, and this is one of the reasons why the above is true, with the other being the excellent plot. In particular, both McMurphy (the so-called “hero”) and Nurse Ratched (the “villain”) are highly memorable.

On a side note, I attempted to envision McMurphy as he is described in the book, but my mind kept reverting to the image of Jack Nicholson (or perhaps a combination of the two).

I believe Kesey’s writing to be highly characteristic, possessing a remarkable ability to create vivid imagery in the reader’s mind. The narrator, a Native American patient named Bromden, suffers from mental disorders and is frequently under the influence of medication, thus often being an unreliable narrator. At times, it can be challenging to clearly understand what is transpiring, but as the book progresses, it’s as if the writing gradually becomes as lucid as Bromden’s mind.

This book does feature some unpleasant moments, which include violence, racism, and misogyny. I don’t think these scenes were reflective of the author’s personal views on life. They might have been related to the era in which the book was written, but I firmly believe they are mainly utilized to illustrate the way the narrator and the other characters perceived the world, given that they are individuals with mental disorders and under medication in a mental hospital.

The ending is undoubtedly one of the best I have ever come across in any book. It is an almost flawless conclusion to a book filled with otherwise imperfect characters and moments. It will linger in your mind for a considerable time, just like the rest of the book.

I needed some time to get used to the writing style.

However, introducing the Chief, an outside figure who, due to his "deafness", doesn't overly intervene with the main storyline, is truly a stroke of genius.

After a while, I became accustomed to his way of telling the story.

All the characters managed to find a special place in my heart.

They are the very essence that makes this book so remarkable and memorable.

There were some scenes that I initially thought were unnecessary, but in reality, they were truly minor and didn't significantly detract from my enjoyment.

The ending definitely came as an unexpected and pleasant surprise to me.

I believed it was fitting and neatly rounded up the entire narrative.

Even though it wasn't one of those books that completely blew me away, I am certain that it will remain firmly in my mind for an extremely long time - perhaps even forever.

This is a truly great book. It has captivated readers with its engaging story and well-developed characters.

The film adaptation is also remarkable, especially with the brilliant performance of Jack Nicholson in the lead role. His portrayal brings the character to life in a way that is both powerful and unforgettable.

The combination of the book and the film makes for a truly immersive experience. Whether you prefer to read the book and imagine the scenes in your mind, or watch the film and be visually transported into the story, both options offer something unique and enjoyable.

Overall, this is a work that has stood the test of time and continues to be beloved by audiences around the world. It is a testament to the power of great storytelling and the talent of those involved in its creation.

Dear lord, the misogyny is truly appalling.

Here we have a so-called "fun-loving" and "carefree" protagonist who is not only a rapist but also promotes rape to his male pals as a means of regaining power over them. The message being sent is that women are evil and will somehow castrate you. It's a sick and twisted view that is completely unacceptable.

As a result, I ended up rooting for Big Nurse out of pure spite. She may not be a perfect character, but compared to the misogynistic actions and attitudes of the protagonist, she seems almost preferable. It's a sad state of affairs when the only option for a somewhat sympathetic character is one who is also flawed, but in a different way. This just goes to show how important it is to have positive and respectful portrayals of women in literature and other forms of media.

A classic!!

Told through the character Chief Big Indian, we are able to see the ins and outs of life in the mental ward. The author skillfully uses the Chief's own imperfections to set the mood for the other patients in the hospital. Each of them seems to go through life with the pace of a crawl, as if trapped in a never-ending cycle of monotony and despair.

Set in the 1960's, the story highlights the life inside a mental institute. For the patients, life is basically the same thing day after day. There is no excitement, no change, until Randle McMurphy shows up. He is an out spoken and rebellious character, determined to fight the system, especially the head nurse, Nurse Ratched. His arrival brings a new energy and hope to the ward, but also sets off a series of events that will change the lives of everyone there forever.

I read this at a time when I was more than certain in my own mind that I was going out of my mind.

So, reading this then was truly a mindfuck.

Great characters inhabit a scary situation in Ken Kesey's beat-generation classic.

Perhaps it's a beat or two after the beat... If so, one doesn't feel it's skipped a beat as it marches to the beat of its own drum!

What's going on here? Why are you talking in circles, Koivu? Am I? I honestly wasn't talking at all.

What?

Exactly.

That's exactly how I felt at times reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

There were good times and horrible times within its pages.

This was great! However, I'll never read it again.

There's the mindfuckery for you.

It's a book that leaves a lasting impression, both for its captivating story and the way it messes with your head.

But once is enough for this wild ride.

I adored this movie with Jack Nicholson, and finally got around to reading the book. What a revelation! It is extremely well-written from the perspective of Big Chief. The author deplored the absence of this fact in the movie script. What I didn't realize was how the book is a prescient critique of the late 50s/early 60s USA. Racism and other -isms were raising the social temperature close to the boiling point. There were also problems of undiagnosed (and little understood) PTSD, following WWII and the Korean War, as this was before the massive US deployment into the Vietnam quagmire. Additionally, there was abuse in institutions of mental health.

It is an absolutely wonderful book that sticks in your gut like a shiv. Had the committee given Faulkner a deserved 2nd Pulitzer before he passed away, instead of awarding it to him posthumously for The Reivers almost grudgingly, I am fairly sure that Kesey would have won it for this extraordinary book.

Some quotes from the book are truly remarkable. For example, "Failures, we are - feeble, stunted, weak little creatures in a weak little race. Rabbits, sans whambam; a pathetic notion." (pp. 160) Another great one is, "The secret to being a top-notch con-man is being able to know what the mark wants, and how to make him think he's getting it." (pp. 192)
The description of the setting is also very vivid. "punched out identical by a machine and strung across the hills outside of town, so fresh from the factory they're still linked together like sausages, a sign saying \\"NEST IN THE WEST HOMES--NO DWN. PAYMENT FOR VETS\\", a playground down the hill from the houses, behind a chickenwire fence and another sign that read \\"ST. LUKE'S SCHOOL FOR BOYS\\". There were five thousand kids in green corduroy pants and white shirts under green pullover sweaters playing crack-the-whip across an acre of crushed gravel. The line popped and twisted and irked like a snake, and every crack popped a little kid off the end, sent him rolling up against the fence like a tumbleweed. Every crack. And it was always the same little kid, over and over."
The book also has beautiful foreboding moments. "The house drifted past. He yawned and winked. \\"Taught me to love, bless her sweet ass. Then -as he was talking -a set of taillights going past lit up McMurphy's face, and the windshield reflected an expression that was allowed only because he figured it'd be too dark for anybody in the car to see, dreadfully tired and strained and frantic, like there wasn't enough time left for something he had to do... While his relaxed, good-natured voice doled out his life for us to live, a rollicking past full of kid fun and drinking buddies and loving women and barroom battles over meager honors -for all of us to dream ourselves into."

This book is a must-read for anyone interested in a powerful and thought-provoking story.

**A Spectacle of Lit's Power to Stand against Oppression**

I remember when, I remember... when I lost my mind. Does that make me crazy? Gnarls Barkley's lyrics from "Crazy" in 2006 seem to echo the themes explored in the remarkable novel, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."

This monotypic and iconoclastic work vividly illustrates the insidious evils of unbridled government oppression within a supposed democracy. Set in an Oregon mental ward, it was written by Ken Kesey after his experience working at a mental institution and published in 1962. The story centers on the intense battle between Randle McMurphy, a rebellious and gregarious low-level convict who views the ward as an easy way to serve his prison time, and Nurse Ratched, one of the most memorable and monstrous villains in all of literature.

The book's primary metaphor is that of the government as "The Combine," as named by the narrator, "Chief" Bromden. Nurse Ratched personifies this oppressive force, using a bagful of disciplinary tactics, some so subtle that the patients are unaware of being controlled, and others so heinous, like electroshock "therapy" and lobotomy, that they seem unimaginable without due process. "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" is a powerful testament to the "fortisimmo" force of literature as a "monument of wit" that will outlast the monuments of power, as Francis Bacon put it. It is a novel that is by turns infuriating, intelligent, and hilarious, leaving a lasting impact on its readers.

Conclusion

This novel stands as a significant work that not only entertains but also makes us reflect on the nature of power and oppression.

So, I re-read this book for my postwar fiction class.

I first read it when I was 21, working at Pine Rest Christian Hospital in Grand Rapids, MI, as a psych aide. It had a profound impact on me in many ways, as I now realize some 40 years later.

I think I liked this book better this time around. It shaped my views on various aspects such as myself, institutions, psych hospitals, psychiatry, madness, society, the need for freedom, and the process of self-knowledge.

Now, it feels very much like a period piece, representing the late Beats to early hippie sixties. It's an experience that takes us from On the Road with the Merry Pranksters to Woodstock, or perhaps something Kesey realized Woodstock would never deliver.

For me, it was also like reading an autobiography. Like Randle in some respects, I too made a mess of my life from the end of the sixties to the end of the seventies.

I think I may have cried at the end of the book when I first read it at 21, romanticizing Randle McMurphy as a symbol of freedom, nature, and the visceral life I had not known as a young Calvinist.

Now, I read Randle as a symbol of Freedom and Nature and Laughter, but not so innocent anymore. I read it with some self-reflective regret as I think about his actions and how they paralleled my own in some ways.

The book feels like a very male adolescent fantasy of "The Man" or Society. It's like Ferris Buehler's ride with all the cartoonish adults, but then it takes a sharp turn to Hell.

To the Beats and Hippies, Society represents Squareness, Order, and the suburban life. The straight life leads to various horrors such as the Holocaust, war, and the destruction of culture.

Dean Moriarty and Randle go on road trips, challenging authority and having fun. But the power struggle turns dark at the end. Ratched shames Billy, who kills himself, and Randle retaliates by beating up and raping her.

Randle is not so innocent anymore. He becomes violent and out of control. But there is still hope when the Chief escapes and we are left with the possibility of a return to a more natural and fulfilling life.

I really liked this book the second time around. The sketches, cover pages, preface, and introduction all added to the experience. The images of the psych hospital were both horrific and darkly hilarious, and the story effectively turned from comedy to tragedy.

In the end, we are left with a glimmer of hope that a return to the Garden (or the Rez) may still offer us some possibilities as we hitch a ride with the Chief Home.

“One can never consider the thing one is fighting against as being definitively defeated. The only possibility is to strike it and strike it, until one runs out of strength and another has to take its place.”

“The thing he was fighting against could never be considered definitely beaten. The only chance was to hit it and hit it, until one was left without strength and another had to take one's place.”

The novel is a great metaphor constructed around two extraordinary characters and told by a giant.

The giant is one of the oldest patients in the psychiatric hospital where the novel takes place, “the chief” Bromden, a half-breed son of an old Indian chief. Bromden is schizophrenic and lives in constant fear that the “Combine” will crush him with its pitiless machinery. To avoid this, he has spent years pretending to be deaf and mute, which puts him in a privileged position from which he can tell us everything that the patients and staff on the ward do and say without taking his presence into account, and which he makes us understand with his lyrical and altered vision of the reality he observes, mediated by his constant hallucinations and delusions.

“No one complains about the fog. Now I know why: although it is annoying, it allows one to sink into it and feel safe. That's what McMurphy doesn't understand, that we want to be safe. He keeps trying to get us out of the fog, expose us, where it would be easy to catch us.”

All this gives the story a certain fairy-tale tone in which the confrontation between two strong wills is told, that of the evil witch Nurse Ratched and that of the brave and cunning Randle Patrick McMurphy, two characters who will remain in our minds forever.

“McMurphy doesn't know it, but he's on the track of what I understood a long time ago, that it's not just a matter of the Big Nurse, but that it's the whole Combine, the great power resides in the Combine at a national level, and the nurse is nothing more than a high-ranking official within it.”

This struggle will symbolize the control that the “Combine”, incarnated by the Big Nurse and her followers and violent nurses, is capable of exercising over indolent and conformist societies, the patients, who prefer the security of control to the responsibility and freedom to choose and direct their destinies, a metaphor for the manipulative capacity of the “Combine” to make them forget even that they are being controlled and make them believe that they are the ones who are handling the situation.

“I don't think you have a very clear idea of what the public is like, friend; in this country, when something doesn't work, everyone leans towards the quickest solution.”

The problem with the story arises when the current sensibility clashes with certain clichés that are striking in the novel: on the one hand, women are whores, repressive nurses or castrating mothers, and on the other hand, the patients are all white, except for “the chief” Bromden, who is half-breed, while the violent guards/nurses are black. It is also not a great success on the part of the author to present so lightly the sexual crime for which McMurphy is condemned.

I haven't seen the movie yet, but I will as soon as I can, and from what I've read, it seems that it leans more towards the struggle of wills than towards the metaphor about power, so I must announce to all those who have seen it that they have a powerful reason to also read the novel.

**Expanded Article**

AUDIOBOOK READ BY JOHN C REILLY PERFECT

2/10/24
I always think of this book when I find myself in a downward spiral. I'm off work again so soon this year. I guess I did things out of order. I'm supposed to descend into clinical depression and then read the book. Lying here today without tears, I'm still infuriated by the fact that a fellow team employee took the praise for using a brand new program that I trained myself on and have been communicating with every day at work for six weeks. He took the praise because he did it on a day I was off. Yep, congratulate the man. Obviously, I'm crazy and have no idea what I'm doing. CRAZY!!! Once a person is labeled, all faith, trust, and responsibility go out the window. It doesn't matter that I've been with the company for 15 years and he's with a temp service. Am I the only one seeing this incongruity? And that's why I want to die.

1/13/24
Well, oops, I did it again. I broke my brain. Today is the first day I've felt human since Tuesday past. I don't know if human is the correct term. Let's consider. Are people in wheelchairs human? Are people with DMII human? Are people without sight human? Then yes, I suppose I've been human as well the past week. But could I function? NOT IN THE LEAST. I woke up today feeling rested. You know that kind of relaxed you get about the middle of a vacation when you question yourself, thinking you had been rested the whole time, and then you realize, "oh right! I've been getting 6 hours of sleep at night after eating chips for a late dinner because I had to get such and such done now"? So 10 hours a night has been quite therapeutic. I thought it was time to crack open this audiobook again. Let's see what lesson I learn this time.

4/18/22
Gosh, how many times have I actually read this now? I honestly do not know. And every time, it's like I've never read it; I take away something different. Tonight's lesson, I think, will be about self-esteem and how fragile it is. How one person can tear it down or build it up. No matter how hard you try to be positive, how you want to love yourself just the way you are, and you even talk to yourself in the mirror - in the bathroom, in the driver's seat, maybe with the swiveled camera on your cellphone - just one word, one look can shred your soul. Why do we have to show our age? How is it that we go to bed one night and it seems that overnight you look like your mother, who you love with all your heart, but you're not ready? You'll never be ready.

10/9/20
The movie is currently on Netflix, and it couldn't have come at a more appropriate time in my life. I broke out the audiobook, blew off the dust, and reminded my inner McMurphy to stay strong. I'm currently on medical leave from work for the third time this year. I feel bad for my psychiatrist. She's definitely earning her money with me.

I first read this book in 2007 after I had a nervous breakdown and became a daytime outpatient at Our Lady of Peace, my city's mental health facility. I lost my teaching job and went 5 days a week; I ate lunch there. I was so medicated they had to transport me. Somehow, this book and movie, especially the character of McMurphy, was how my dad related to me during this trying time. Mental health is a trigger issue for me. It's not understood today, and it certainly wasn't understood in the '60s. Let's just keep them caged, sedated, and manipulated. Make them feel guilty about their problems. Take away comfort and leisure. No friends, no family, no fun, no fresh air. Yeah, that sounds healthy.

Addendum 2/13/18
Just bought this on Audible. 50th anniversary edition read by John C. Reilly. It got me thinking of my dad asking his McMurphy how Ms. Ratchett was today. That was probably the roughest patch of my life, but I would never have changed a thing. I learned so much about myself and became so much stronger in spirit. However, I realize that if I had lived in an earlier time period, my outcome could have been much gloomier and permanent. I've been reading various other mental health books lately, and sadly, some things never change as advanced as medicine has become. We just can't seem to grasp the BRAIN.

AUDIO REREAD # 19
How many of us "have been told dragons do not exist, then been dragged to their lairs?" How many of us "forget sometimes what laughter can do?" I think out of all the characters in all the books, Billy breaks my heart the most. Tag teamed by his mother and Nurse Ratchett, he never had a chance in life. All he wants in life is love, and he proves himself to be such a gentleman. As I drove home from work this morning listening to this book, I glanced at my speedometer; I was driving 40 mph on the interstate. It was during the gas station scene when the gang learns that being insane can still mean being powerful. That's when I finally realized how much hope McMurphy instilled in these terrified, suppressed lives, which makes the last couple of hours of the story all the more tragic. McMurphy gave these men another glance at happiness, reminded them how to be assertive, inspired a little self-worth again. He basically showed them they were men, deserving of humane treatment. They were not anyone's "Boys," even at Billy's age, the youngest at 31. They didn't deserve the underhanded, demeaning manipulations and insinuations of a sadist. But these new emotions did not germinate and bloom; only malice and grief took root. Very few books hold my heart through the years as this one does. I appreciate Kesey's honesty on the pages.