One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
by Ken Kesey

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Book Summary Information

• ISBN13: 9780451163967
• Condition: New
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Book Reviews of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Book Review: Modern Classic
Summary: 5 Stars

A lot less has been made of the fact that the book in many ways and all by itself is very therapeutic. I read it for the first time in my mid-teens, a period when most of us go through the difficult stage of trying to determine who we are, and worse, whether what we are becoming is acceptable. I'd look around at people my age and wonder how in the world they were so confident, so smart, so sure of themselves. Me? I was not unlike the Chief of this novel, wandering around in a fog half the time, trying to figure out what in the heck I was supposed to do or say or think at any given moment.

But I read this book and suddenly--well, not suddenly--it helped to make things easier. What it makes clear is this: it's okay to be yourself. You don't have to hide things. It's okay to talk while your delicate white hands float in the air and form what you say, like Harding. It's okay to write letters and look concerned, even though everyone in the world thinks you're a Neanderthal, like McMurphy. It's okay to feel sad, it's okay to want to be alone, it's okay to be nervous around girls. What a relief it was when this finally sank in: I wasn't some kind of a psychopath, doomed forever to be a figure of ridicule while my back was turned. It's ohhh-kayyy! To me this was the great soothing message of the novel, and why I will forever be grateful to it.

But before I go running off to the shrink, I'd better mention that on top of everything else, this book is just a flat-out, crackling great read. Right off the bat the classic confrontation is set up: the brash, untamed, loud McMurphy against the powerful, establishmentarian, icy Big Nurse. Set in an insane asylum, it is literally psychological warfare, with each of them carefully probing and then cutting at the other's weakness. As the novel goes on the stakes become increasingly steeper, until the very souls of the men on the ward are at risk. Fascinatingly, the novel ends with neither party having a clear-cut victory, and fittingly, the casualties are terrible.

It is spectacularly written. An inmate, the Chief, is the narrator of the story. In his crazy mind, everything is mechanical and impersonal. Wires, transistors, metal, girds, rust, smoke and oil are what things are made of. He knows the Big Nurse listens to everything with the radio equipment in her purse. He hears the machinery humming in the walls. This functions as a superb literary device, symbolizing his paranoia, but at the same time it creates wonderful imagery. Here is the nurse, early in the novel, angry that disorder--personalized by McMurphy--has come to her ward: "Her nostrils flare open . . . She works the hinges in her elbows and fingers. I hear a small squeak . . . she's already big as a truck, trailing that wicker bag behind in her exhaust like a semi behind a Jimmy Diesel. Her lips are parted, and her smile's going out before her like a radiator grill. I can smell the hot oil and magneto spark when she goes past." So can we.

The novel is loaded with memorable wit, much of which seems to have entered the daily lexicon. "I wash my hands of the whole deal," says Ruckly, the nutcase in Disturbed. "I'm TIRED," says Pete, after the nasty bickering he sees his friends engage in. Most memorable of all is the comment uttered by the relentless McMurphy, disgusted by his ward mates' timidity. "But I tried, though. Goddamnit, I sure as hell did that much, now, didn't I?" Is it possible to say that one has had a satisfactory life simply by being able to say that he has tried? I think so.

In the end, the lessons to be learned from this novel are exemplified by the two greatest characters, McMurphy and Harding. (No, the Big Nurse is not one of them, being nothing more than a common symbol of ubiquitous societal rigidity). McMurphy goes out in a blaze of glory and despair, destroying himself, and sadly, destroying others. But it is Harding who goes out on his own terms. "I want to do it on my own, by myself, right out that front door, with all the traditional red tape and complications . . . I want them to know that I was able to do it that way."

Certainly among the ten or so best novels of the latter half of the twentieth century. If you haven't yet read this one, do yourself a favor.

Summary of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Classics Books

• Subjects > Literature & Fiction > Classics
• Genre Fiction
• Literary
• Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Thrillers > Psychological Thrillers