One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, written by Ken Kesey in 1962, is a book about a energetic con man that turns a mental institution upside down with his rowdy tricks and random attacks with the head nurse. Throughout the book, this man shows the others in the institution how to stand up for them, to challenge traditional values to society and to be who they want to be. It is basically a book of good versus evil, the good being the con man McMurphy, and the bad being the head nurse, Nurse Ratched. McMurphy rejuvenates the hope of the patients, fights Nurse Ratched's control on the ward, and represents the feelings of the author on society at the time.
Before McMurphy arrives, the ward is your basic average mental institution. Men line up to receive their medication, they do puzzles and play cards, and the head nurse, and a group of big black fellows, carry patients off to be shaved or for electroshock therapy. The people can't do anything about it. After all, some of them are vegetables, and according to society they're all nuts. Then one day, McMurphy goes in and upsets the ward. He's loud, he cracks jokes, and as he said of himself, "I'm a gambling fool and whenever I meet with a deck of cards I lays my money down." Nobody was sure whether he was crazy or if he was just acting like it to get out of the work. Soon enough people realized that either way, he had it out for Nurse Ratched.
At first, Nurse Ratched, tries to ignore him. After all, plenty like himself had come and gone. Most of them had been treated with a little electroshock and they were down to normal, or as normal as someone in a nuthouse could be. She tried to get him to the shower, a cleaning process all incoming patients have to go through. He says that he's plenty clean. Soon it became clear he had to be dealt with. He taught the patients how to play blackjack, and he even had a deck of cards with pictures of naked ladies on them. He also tried to
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, written by Ken Kesey in 1962, is a book about a energetic con man that turns a mental institution upside down with his rowdy tricks and random attacks with the head nurse. Throughout the book, this man shows the others in the institution how to stand up for them, to challenge traditional values to society and to be who they want to be. It is basically a book of good versus evil, the good being the con man McMurphy, and the bad being the head nurse, Nurse Ratched. McMurphy rejuvenates the hope of the patients, fights Nurse Ratched's control on the ward, and represents the feelings of the author on society at the time.
Before McMurphy arrives, the ward is your basic average mental institution. Men line up to receive their medication, they do puzzles and play cards, and the head nurse, and a group of big black fellows, carry patients off to be shaved or for electroshock therapy. The people can't do anything about it. After all, some of them are vegetables, and according to society they're all nuts. Then one day, McMurphy goes in and upsets the ward. He's loud, he cracks jokes, and as he said of himself, "I'm a gambling fool and whenever I meet with a deck of cards I lays my money down." Nobody was sure whether he was crazy or if he was just acting like it to get out of the work. Soon enough people realized that either way, he had it out for Nurse Ratched.
At first, Nurse Ratched, tries to ignore him. After all, plenty like himself had come and gone. Most of them had been treated with a little electroshock and they were down to normal, or as normal as someone in a nuthouse could be. She tried to get him to the shower, a cleaning process all incoming patients have to go through. He says that he's plenty clean. Soon it became clear he had to be dealt with. He taught the patients how to play blackjack, and he even had a deck of cards with pictures of naked ladies on them. He also tried to