“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” by Ken Kesey is a rather entertaining and somewhat depressing tale about a psych ward. The story starts out with Chief Bromden, a native American who pretends to be deaf and dumb, washing the floors. He is the narrator of the story, but not the protagonist. Seeing the world through the Chief’s eyes is a strange experience, because he describes things in an odd manner. He describes the hospital’s workers by order of their blackness. For instance he’d say that the “least black man” came over to do something rather. Later that morning R.P. McMurphy, the protagonist, is admitted into the hospital. It almost seems as though he had come here for the sole purpose of flipping everything upside down. He keeps defying the head nurse, nurse Ratchet, and turns everything into a bet.
Nurse Ratchet is the cold keeper of this wing of the mental hospital, and is known for never letting anything get to her. Thus McMurphy bets the other residents that he can get under her skin within one week. He tries a few cute pranks on her, but it doesn’t really take. He tries to get the nurse to let everyone watch the baseball world series. When it comes down to a vote, he discovers that everyone is too afraid to stand up to nurse Ratchet. Later that day, while the guys were playing cards in a water room, McMurphy takes his anger out by spraying the other attendants with a hose. While joking around, he makes a bet that he can lift the large water system to smash through a window and escape. In the end, he lost the bet but left saying “At least I tried, god dammit.” The next day a vote I brought up again as to whether or not they can watch world series. This time, it is unanimous, but nurse Ratchet decides that because the chronics, people who have effectively lost their perception of reality and aren’t that functional, haven’t voted so they don’t have a majority. McMurphy goes from chronic to chronic begging one of them to raise his hand. Eventually, Chief Bromden raises his hand, thus risking everyone finding out he’s neither dumb nor deaf, giving the majority. Nurse Ratchet still doesn’t turn on the TV, but all the attendants still sit, pretending that game is actually on, knowing that they had beaten Ratchet this time.
All seems to be going well, until McMurphy learns that hospital can keep him there until they deem him ready to go back into society. After discovering this, he stops sticking it to the man and tries to act nice so that they’d let him out in 4 months. This means that he stopped helping the other patients stand up to miss Ratchet. After realizing that things will go back to the way they were, one of the patients decides to get his fingers stuck in the grate of the bottom of the pool and drowns. When the other patients complain to McMurphy that he stopped standing up to the Nurse, he says they should have told him that he can be held in the hospital, and that they were using him. It is then revealed that most of patients are actually here voluntarily and can leave whenever they want. This apparently motivates McMurphy to stand up to miss ratchet again. He breaks into the nurses office when she refuses to give the patients their cigarettes which gets him sent to the disturbed ward, where he is treated repeatedly with electro therapy.
Other shenanigans McMurphy performs involves stealing a fishing boat so that the patients can go on fishing trip and throwing a Christmas party the night he wants to escape. During the party however, he gets drunk and just falls asleep. The next morning the nurse Ratchet discovers the remnants of the party. After one of the patients commits suicide and McMurphy tries to strangle her, he is given a front lobe lobotomy. As he is placed in the room, later that night Chief Bromden strangles McMurphy, then throws the water unit from earlier through a window and escapes.
This was a very good book, and a fun read. It was very humorous which helped make the read easy, but also made the ending hit harder because of the contrast. Incidentally, reading this book while imagining Jack Nicolson reading McMurpies lines makes for a very fun experience. There are certain things that are never made clear, probably for the best, like whether McMurphy was really crazy, or if he was faking it to have an easier jail sentence. Another thing is why he decided to become a martyr and champion for the other patients. In summary, I highly recommend this book to anyone over the age of 14.
