You should read it: One flew over the cuckoo’s nest by Ken Kesey
One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest had a huge impact on me when I first read it in high school. For those of you who are not big readers, you are probably familiar with the 1975 movie of the same name starring Jack Nickelson.
It tells the story of these guys in a mental institution during the 1950’s, a time in which you really did not want to be send to an asylum. The patients are trapped inside the mental institution with electro-shock therapy as a valid means of treating most disorders or even disorderly behaviour.
The story of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest is told by Chief, an enormous schizophrenic Native American who spent years in the asylum pretending to be deaf and mute. The all-male asylum is pretty much run by Nurse Ratched, a horrible stiff and tyrannical woman, and her black orderlies.
It tells the story of these guys in a mental institution during the 1950’s, a time in which you really did not want to be send to an asylum. The patients are trapped inside the mental institution with electro-shock therapy as a valid means of treating most disorders or even disorderly behaviour.
The story of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest is told by Chief, an enormous schizophrenic Native American who spent years in the asylum pretending to be deaf and mute. The all-male asylum is pretty much run by Nurse Ratched, a horrible stiff and tyrannical woman, and her black orderlies.
Things are very boring and depressing in the asylum, until one day they get a new patient named Randle Patrick McMurphy. McMurphy is a rebellious happy-go-lucky kind of guy, who has faked insanity in order to serve out his prison sentence for battery in the mental hospital.Seeing how bad things are at the asylum, McMurphy takes it upon himself to lighten things up and make staying there more fun. Of course, this is not how Nurse Ratched sees it, as his constant attempts to upset the sacred and boring routine of daily life at the asylum only annoy her, and she is waiting for an excuse to be able to really discipline him, which is of course, only a matter of time. Read the entire review here.
What I love about this novel is the detailed and vivid description of what life must have been like in an insane asylum during the 1950’s. The lack of control and the helplessness of the patients, who are literary at the mercy of the wardens, is really scary to me.
That, and I was very surprised by the total lack of actual treatment most patients received. It also makes me think about what it means to be normal or crazy, and how sometimes there is such a thin line between the two.
I have read One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest many times since high school, and it is still one of my favourite books I have ever read.
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