One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
It was the Psychedelic 60's and the vast drug experimentation of Americans took on another level, the junkies, the sane and insane alike. For the mentally unstable medication through Psycho therapy became a fad like no other.
Wanting to learn more about this unusual behaviour Ken Kessey volunteered himself to take part in a study at the Menlo Park Veterans Hospital on the effects of psychoactive drugs. His experiences as a medical guinea pig inspired Kesey to write One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1962.
********
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest was set in a fictional mental asylum ruled by a "tyranical" middle aged Nurse Ratched. Narrated by the towering Native-American Chief Bromden a schizophrenic who pretends to be both deaf and dumb.
Through his self-imposed solitude Bromden accurately observed each element of the hospital's surroundings and manages to give readers a full and personal account of the arrival of the rebellious new inmate R.P. McMurphy. ( whose initials can be aptly defined as "revolution per minute").
Enter Randle P. McMurphy, a petty criminal who fakes his own madness in order for him to be admitted in the institution and therefore avoid a lenghty prison term.
Prior to the arrival of McMurphy, the asylum was run by the domineering Nurse Ratched and her assistants ( who were described as black men by Bromden ). The patient's life revolves around a clockwork precision setting bound by the strict rules of the staff members.
McMurphy brought with himself a symbol of resistance and rebellious exuberance against these rules, he finds the "therapeutic techniques" of the staff as non-existent, that medicated drug and the threat of electro shock therapy is not making the patients well, but just a method to keep them scared and forever following authority.
And the ensuing results is a never ending battle between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched.
*****
The book represents a much larger aspect other than life in a mental institution, it also paints the over-all battle of the weak and the strong in society as well. The main characters' struggle to regain sanity in the mental institution clearly represented the title "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" which is Chief Bromden's memory of a children's nursery rhyme that depicts a group of geese flying in different directions, continously opposing each other. In the book it is Nurse Ratched, McMurphy, the Chief, the acutes and the chronics who were literally and symbolically representing the wild geese chase.
Ken Kessey's beliefs that most of the patients he encountered as a volunteer and late r on while working in Menlo Park as a nurse assistant, doesn't really fit the typical crazed man. Only he believes that these people were sent to such place making them to believe that professional help and aid of drugs can help them get back to the system's definition of a sane man.
Wherein Kessey's beliefs that these patients were not insane, that society had pushed them out because they did not fit the conventional ideas and ideal stratosphere of how people were supposed to act and live their life.
And the result was a literary gift that critics hailed as one of the best novels of all time.
*****
I haven't seen the movie version, but its hard not to think of Jack Nicholson when reminded of Randall McMurphy, the zest of his character critics describes as a bit Dean Moriarty of Kerouac's "On the Road", which is understandable to think that Ken Kesey is a part of that so called "beat generation". His other novel "Sometimes a Great Notion" was a product of his experiences with the 'muse' of the beatniks, Neal Cassady who introduced Kesey to the other "beatniks" Kerouac, Ginsberg and Timothy Leary.
Randall McMurphy is the character that is not about to impress or be a leader of the pack, he was just this trickster, a joker, gambler, no good man ( according to the norms of society ). But along the way he became this 'personal saviour' of other patients. ( other scholars refers to him as a Christ like figure whose sacrifices left a valuable lesson to the other patients). In a way a rebel with a cause, out to defy authority that subjects its followers as slave. To quote Harding "the strong becomes strong while continously devouring the weak".
McMurphy is the symbol that gives life to an otherwise normal set-up of the Asylum, where-in Ken Kesey's challenges and questions about the state of psycho therapy in America, of the ruler's rule over its followers, in a sense that it asks the question of tyranny, the urge or fetish of creating an order of rules, authority for the so called greater good but at the moment neglecting the proper and just things that makes a human being alive. In doing so, this so called parameters makes a human soul more stagnant than ever before.
Bounded by paralysis, mental anguish and labels such as Acutes, Chronics and other clinical terms.
And after reading this book, you might as well find yourself asking the very same questions that Kesey brought up in this great novel.
Wanting to learn more about this unusual behaviour Ken Kessey volunteered himself to take part in a study at the Menlo Park Veterans Hospital on the effects of psychoactive drugs. His experiences as a medical guinea pig inspired Kesey to write One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1962.
********
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest was set in a fictional mental asylum ruled by a "tyranical" middle aged Nurse Ratched. Narrated by the towering Native-American Chief Bromden a schizophrenic who pretends to be both deaf and dumb.
Through his self-imposed solitude Bromden accurately observed each element of the hospital's surroundings and manages to give readers a full and personal account of the arrival of the rebellious new inmate R.P. McMurphy. ( whose initials can be aptly defined as "revolution per minute").
Enter Randle P. McMurphy, a petty criminal who fakes his own madness in order for him to be admitted in the institution and therefore avoid a lenghty prison term.
Prior to the arrival of McMurphy, the asylum was run by the domineering Nurse Ratched and her assistants ( who were described as black men by Bromden ). The patient's life revolves around a clockwork precision setting bound by the strict rules of the staff members.
McMurphy brought with himself a symbol of resistance and rebellious exuberance against these rules, he finds the "therapeutic techniques" of the staff as non-existent, that medicated drug and the threat of electro shock therapy is not making the patients well, but just a method to keep them scared and forever following authority.
And the ensuing results is a never ending battle between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched.
*****
The book represents a much larger aspect other than life in a mental institution, it also paints the over-all battle of the weak and the strong in society as well. The main characters' struggle to regain sanity in the mental institution clearly represented the title "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" which is Chief Bromden's memory of a children's nursery rhyme that depicts a group of geese flying in different directions, continously opposing each other. In the book it is Nurse Ratched, McMurphy, the Chief, the acutes and the chronics who were literally and symbolically representing the wild geese chase.
Ken Kessey's beliefs that most of the patients he encountered as a volunteer and late r on while working in Menlo Park as a nurse assistant, doesn't really fit the typical crazed man. Only he believes that these people were sent to such place making them to believe that professional help and aid of drugs can help them get back to the system's definition of a sane man.
Wherein Kessey's beliefs that these patients were not insane, that society had pushed them out because they did not fit the conventional ideas and ideal stratosphere of how people were supposed to act and live their life.
And the result was a literary gift that critics hailed as one of the best novels of all time.
*****
I haven't seen the movie version, but its hard not to think of Jack Nicholson when reminded of Randall McMurphy, the zest of his character critics describes as a bit Dean Moriarty of Kerouac's "On the Road", which is understandable to think that Ken Kesey is a part of that so called "beat generation". His other novel "Sometimes a Great Notion" was a product of his experiences with the 'muse' of the beatniks, Neal Cassady who introduced Kesey to the other "beatniks" Kerouac, Ginsberg and Timothy Leary.
Randall McMurphy is the character that is not about to impress or be a leader of the pack, he was just this trickster, a joker, gambler, no good man ( according to the norms of society ). But along the way he became this 'personal saviour' of other patients. ( other scholars refers to him as a Christ like figure whose sacrifices left a valuable lesson to the other patients). In a way a rebel with a cause, out to defy authority that subjects its followers as slave. To quote Harding "the strong becomes strong while continously devouring the weak".
McMurphy is the symbol that gives life to an otherwise normal set-up of the Asylum, where-in Ken Kesey's challenges and questions about the state of psycho therapy in America, of the ruler's rule over its followers, in a sense that it asks the question of tyranny, the urge or fetish of creating an order of rules, authority for the so called greater good but at the moment neglecting the proper and just things that makes a human being alive. In doing so, this so called parameters makes a human soul more stagnant than ever before.
Bounded by paralysis, mental anguish and labels such as Acutes, Chronics and other clinical terms.
And after reading this book, you might as well find yourself asking the very same questions that Kesey brought up in this great novel.
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