One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest By Ken Kesey
Summary ¼ PDF, eBook or Kindle ePUB free ✓ Ken Kesey
Boisterous, ribald, and ultimately shattering, this is the unforgettable story of a mental ward and its inhabitants, especially the tyrannical Big Nurse Ratched and Randle Patrick McMurphy, the brawling, fun-loving new inmate who resolves to oppose her. We see the struggle through the eyes of Chief Bromden, the seemingly mute half-Indian patient who witnesses and understands McMurphy's heroic attempts to do battle with the awesome power of the Combine
Kesey's galvanizing novel probes the meaning of madness, often turning the conventional notion of sanity on its head, and offers and unforgettable portrait of a man teaching the value of self-reliance and laughter who is destroyed by the forces of hatred and fear. One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest
“Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.” “He knows that you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy.”
Ken Kesey’s novel has been on my TBR since March 2014. I do not know why it took me so long to finally read it, maybe it was the subject, but I am satisfied that I finally did. It is indeed a masterpiece and it will break your heart, as good books seem to do.
In short, the novel is set in a psychiatric ward with strict barbaric routines and treatment procedures. The ward is ruled by Nurse Ratched and her reign of terror is disturbed when a new patient comes in. McMurphy is laud, fun-loving and a trickster. After he sees how the „inmates” are treated he makes it his mission to disturb the routine. The novel is written from the Pov of a patient, Chief Bromden, a native American who feints being mute and deaf to be left alone.
“All I know is this: nobody's very big in the first place, and it looks to me like everybody spends their whole life tearing everybody else down.” “If you don't watch it people will force you one way or the other, into doing what they think you should do, or into just being mule-stubborn and doing the opposite out of spite.”
The quotes above sums up the plot very well. McMurphy chose the stubbornness and you get to wonder, was it the right choice? But if you don’t fight then you lose yourself. Having read Stoner after this one, I got to also see the resigned behavior and the consequences are not less dramatic sometimes. Hard novel to read but it is worth it.
Literature Fiction Last night, at about 2 am, I finished 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' by Ken Kesey.
I lay awake for a long time afterward, watching the bars of light on the ceiling, holding my eyes open until the pupils dilated enough to shrink the light, then I'd blink and have to start all over.
Finally I sat up and turned on the lights.
The book had done something to me. Like it'd punched me in the face and said, Do something, you idiot!
So I gathered up a bunch of sentimental shit from around my apartment, stuffed it into a backpack, hiked across town, and threw it off the Morrison Bridge.
The backpack made a loud 'thunk' when it hit the water. Like a body falling from a building. I watched it float downstream: a tiny dot weaving through the rippling reflections of the city lights, until it finally sank below the surface.
I tell you this story because, in a way, throwing that bag of stuff off the bridge is the best analysis I can make of Kesey's book.
So much has been said before, what else can I say?
Chuck Palahniuk summed it up nicely in the forward for the Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition. He explains that 'Cuckoo's Nest' tells the same story as the most popular novels of the last century, it focuses on the modern paradox of trying to be human in the well-oiled machine of a capitalist democracy, where you must be either a savior or a slave. Palahniuk points out that 'Cuckoo's Nest' shows us a third option: You can create and live in a new system...not rebelling against or carving into your culture, but creating a vision of your own and working to make that option real.
Is there anything else left to say?
Reading this book is like being inside Fight Club. You take punch after punch, but keep crawling back for more because it's making you feel things you didn't know you could feel--and as long as you stay conscious, and don't give up or let your eyes glaze over, this book will creep into the very edges of your consciousness and give you new words for the questions you always wanted to ask, show you how to draw a map of your own, and give you a glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, it is possible to rise above the machine of society and become human again. Literature Fiction Profane, hilarious, disturbing, heartbreaking, shocking – powerful.
Ken Kesey’s genre defining 1962 novel that was made into a Broadway play and then made into an Academy Award winning film starring Jack Nicholson will inspire strong emotions. I can see people loving it or hating it.
I loved it.
First of all, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart: a book that is banned from libraries has a place on my bookshelf.
So all you amateur censurers out there – you are my enemy. I don’t like you. I defy you. A book that you don’t like is a book that I do and I want to rub it in your face.
This from Wikipedia:
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is one of America's most highly challenged and banned novels.
• 1974: Five residents of Strongsville, Ohio sued the local Board of Education to remove the novel from classrooms. They deemed the book pornographic and said that it glorifies criminal activity, has a tendency to corrupt juveniles, and contains descriptions of bestiality, bizarre violence, and torture, dismemberment, death, and human elimination.
• 1975: The book was removed from public schools in Randolph, New York and Alton, Oklahoma.
• 1977: Removed from the required reading list in Westport, Maine.
• 1978: Banned from the St. Anthony, Idaho Freemont High School and the teacher who assigned the novel was fired.
• 1982: Challenged at Merrimack, New Hampshire High School.
• 1986: Challenged at Aberdeen Washington High school in Honors English classes.
2000: Challenged at Placentia Unified School District (Yorba Linda, California). Parents say that the teachers could choose the best books, but they keep choosing this garbage over and over again.
The teacher who assigned this as reading was FIRED??? The year 2000? The year 2000??? We are in the 21st century and someone is calling this garbage??
Ok.
First of all, McMurphy is alive.
“Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.”
The dramatic tension between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched was literary diamonds – rare treasure. Kesey created a novel wherein was a clash between an unstoppable force and an immovable object. Clash! That’s what it was and a reader could see it coming from a mile down the tracks, like a freight train whistling and steaming. Here it comes.
McMurphy was the novel’s tragic hero – a red headed Irish American troublemaker who everyone loves deep down. The Big Nurse – Mildred Ratched, is the Man. She is the embodiment of the institution, the rules, the law, the Order. Kesey has drawn an epic clash between chaos and order and did so within the halls and bleached clean walls of an insane asylum.
Though I could not help picturing Jack Nicholson as McMurphy while reading this, Kesey’s McMurphy is really described more like Charles Dickens’ Fagan, a red headed trickster, and perhaps in mythic terms he is Coyote, or Loki, he is THE TRICKSTER GOD, he is that opposing force that makes the orderly way of the universe stronger.
“Rules? PISS ON YOUR FUCKING RULES!”
In another way, McMurphy is the quintessential American, and he can be seen as a metaphor for the spirit of America. He is the entrepreneur, the self-starter, the untamed rebel who makes his own rules. He is the great equalizer, the leader who kicks down the boundaries, who champions the little guy, who colors outside the lines and who picks the small boys and the fat kids on his team and then wins anyway and wins big.
“All I know is this: nobody's very big in the first place, and it looks to me like everybody spends their whole life tearing everybody else down.”
Kesey’s narrator is also an unlikely selection: Chief Bromden, nicknamed Chief Broom because he is made to sweep the halls. A giant of a man, the rational, modern world has emasculated him, made him small and without a voice or strength. Chief is clearly schizophrenic but also lucid, he and the other patients are humans, deserving of respect and sympathy; one of the central points made by Kesey, who is as humanist as Kurt Vonnegut and as fun as a barrel full of monkeys. Chief’s dramatic and dynamic evolution is the barometer of this great work.
The Chronics and acutes. When McMurphy arrives at the institute, the residents are informally divided between the chronics – those whose condition has demanded their lifelong commitment; and the acutes, those whose insanity may be temporary and remedied. Interestingly, many are there voluntarily. McMurphy’s friendship with Chief (an erstwhile chronic) and his championing of the acutes status is a central theme of the book.
“What do you think you are, for Chrissake, crazy or somethin'? Well you're not! You're not! You're no crazier than the average asshole out walkin' around on the streets and that's it. ”
Like Upton Sinclair’s muckraking journalistic exposures in The Jungle, Kesey’s novel can also be seen as a bright light shined on the mental health facilities in the 60s.
“He Who Marches Out Of Step Hears Another Drum”
A book that should be read.
Literature Fiction 4/18/22 gosh how many times have I actually read this now? I honestly do not know. And every time it’s like I’ve never read it; I take away something different. Tonight’s lesson is I think will be self esteem and how fragile that is, how it can take one person to tear it down or one person to build it. How no matter how hard you try to be positive, how you want to love yourself just the way you are and you even talk to yourself in the mirror-in the bathroom, in the driver’s seat, maybe the swiveled camera on your cellphone just one word, one look shreds your soul. Why do we have to show our age ? How is it we go to bed one night and it seems that overnight you look like your mother, who you love with all of your heart, but you’re not ready? You’ll never be ready.
10/9/20. The movie is currently on Netflix and it couldn’t have come at a more appropriate time in my life. I broke out the audiobook, blew off the dust, and reminded my inner McMurphy to stay strong. Im currently on medical leave from work for the third time this year. I feel bad for my psychiatrist. She’s definitely earning her money with me.
I first read this book in 2007 after I became a daytime outpatient at Our Lady of Peace, my city's mental health facility. I had a nervous breakdown after losing my teaching job. I went 5 days a week; I ate lunch there. I was so medicated they transported me. Somehow this book and movie, and especially the character of McMurphy, was how my dad related to me during this trying time. Mental health is a trigger issue with me. It's not understood today. It certainly wasn't understood in the '60s. Let's just keep them caged, sedated, and manipulated. Make them feel guilty about their problems. Take away comfort and leisure. No friends, no family, no fun, no fresh air. Yeah, that sounds healthy
Addendum 2/13/18: just bought this on audible. 50th anniversary edition read by John C. Reilly
Got me thinking of my dad asking his McMurphy how Ms. Ratchett was today. That was probably the roughest patch of my life, but I would never have changed a thing. I learned so much about myself, and became so much stronger in spirit. However, I realize that if I had lived in an earlier time period my outcome could have been much gloomier and permanent. I’ve been reading various other mental health books lately, and sadly some things never change as advanced medicine has become. We just can’t seem to grasp the BRAIN.
AUDIO REREAD # 19
How many of us have been told dragons do not exist, then been dragged to their lairs?
How many of us forget sometimes what laughter can do?
I think out of all the characters out of all the books, Billy the most breaks my heart. Tag teamed by his mother and Nurse Ratchett, he never had a chance in life. All he wants in life is love, and he proves himself to be such a gentleman.
As I drove home from work this morning listening to this book, I glanced at my speedometer; I was driving 40 mph on the interstate. It was during the gas station scene when the gang learns being insane can still mean being powerful. That’s when I finally realized how much hope McMurphy instilled in these terrified, suppressed lives, which makes the last couple of hours of the story all the more tragic. McMurphy gave these men another glance at happiness, reminded them how to be assertive, inspired a little self-worth again. He basically he showed them they were men, they were deserving of humane treatment. They were not anyone’s “ Boys” even at Billy’s age, the youngest at 31. They didn’t didn’t deserve the underhanded, demeaning manipulations and insinuations of a sadist. But these these new emotions did not germinate and bloom, only malice and grief took root.
Very few books hold my heart through years as this one does. I appreciate Kelsey’s honesty on the pages. Literature Fiction
This novel tells us the story of despotic Nurse Ratched, who works in Oregon State mental hospital, and McMurphy, a patient who questions the rules imposed on the inmates by her in the hospital. It is considered one of the most controversial medical novels ever written and was banned multiple times for several reasons.
Multiple actresses turned down the role of Nurse Ratched when this novel was made into a movie. Everyone was scared to play her role as they were afraid that it would affect their image. It was ironic that Louisa Fletcher, who at last played the role, won the Academy Award for best actress along with her costar Jack Nicholson who won it for the best actor.
This book is, directly and indirectly, telling us a lot about healthcare problems during that time. It has a remarkable position in history as it changed the way Americans approached mental health. This is not a perfect book as there are many mistakes while the author tried to recreate a mental institution in the 1960s. Still, the author's personal experience due to his job in a Psychiatric hospital helped him a lot in creating this novel. This is indubitably one of the best Medical novels I ever read. Its silver screen version is also one of the best movies I have ever seen.
He knows that you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy.Literature Fiction
“All I know is this: nobody’s very big in the first place, and it looks to me like everybody spends their whole life tearing everybody else down.”
- Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
This is a book I had little interest in reading. A novel set in an insane asylum? No thanks.
I spent four years of my legal career defending indigent clients facing commitment before our local Board of Mental Health. It was an experience I had not trained for, prepared for, or frankly could have imagined before I started. It was an eye-opening glimpse into the world of mental illnesses. Underfunded and understaffed hospitals. Patients with deep paranoiac beliefs, their minds spinning webs within webs within webs. Patients who suffered terrifying hallucinations. (I was once told, while interviewing a client, that I appeared to him as a skeleton). Patients capable of sudden, violent changes of moods. (The one piece of advice I ever received: sit next to the door. Always sit next to the door). Patients who were stigmatized, ostracized, alienated from families and friends.
One of the lasting takeaways from those years is a healthy skepticism of the way mental illness is portrayed in popular culture. Typically, we’re either dealing with a psychopathic killer (ala Michael Meyers) or a person whose mental illness is portrayed as a moral failing, a character flaw that can be overcome with a better attitude (ala Hurley in LOST, or the entire cast of Dream Team).
With those prejudgments in mind, I likely would have ignored Ken Kesey’s counterculture classic, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I imagined it as shallow hijinks, with a plot that struck me as a bit like Cool Hand Luke getting involuntarily committed.
But then it was chosen by the Eastern Nebraska Men’s Biblio and Social Club, and the choice was out of my hands.
Even so, I hesitated, until just a few days before our meeting. Grudgingly, I opened the first page, and read the first odd, discombobulating lines: “They’re out there. Black boys in white suits up before me to commit sex acts in the hall and get it mopped up before I can catch them.” Suffice to say, Kesey had my attention.
Those words are spoken by Chief Bromden, the tale’s first-person narrator. Bromden, known as Chief Broom, is a Columbia Indian who has convinced everyone on the ward that he is deaf and dumb. Because of this perception, no one pays attention to him. He is able to see things others wouldn’t be allowed to see, and hear things other wouldn’t be allowed to hear. And so he is able to relate the story of Randal P. McMurphy, a red-haired Steve McQueen-type with a personality disorder, who shows up on the ward and engages in an epic battle of wills with the Nurse Ratched, a.k.a., the “Big Nurse.”
(Side note: I watched the movie after reading the book. Jack Nicholson is a fine actor. He is not Randal P. McMurphy).
Chief Bromden is a fascinating choice as narrator, because he is not – at least initially – the central focus. Instead, Bromden barely figures in the early plot, serving mainly to describe McMurphy’s attempt to upend the ward that Nurse Ratched runs with an iron hand. The action flows around him, like water around a rock.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest unfolds episodically, with Ratched and McMurphy trading figurative blows, notching both victories and defeats as they struggle for the soul of the other patients. Kesey’s Bromden has an inimitable voice, and is a classic unreliable narrator (“it’s the truth even if it didn't happen”), prone to long, hallucinatory digressions that serve as a jarring reminder that his brain chemistry is different from that of others. There were times when his phrasing is so breathtakingly brilliant that it takes you out of the story – after all, this is supposed to be Bromden talking, not literary star Ken Kesey. Mostly though, the hypnotic progression of events leading to the shocking endgame leave little time for such quibbles.
The power play between Nurse Ratched and McMurphy is a classic pitting of “the Man” versus “the Rebel.” It was published in 1962, and the authoritarian-antiauthoritarian dialectic is part of the larger context of those times.
However, Kesey is also critiquing the mental health establishment. He once worked in a psychiatric ward, and famously experimented with a host of psychoactive drugs. His observations and insights are baked into Bromden’s story. By the time Cuckoo’s Nest came out, electroshock therapy and lobotomies had started to lose their luster as panaceas, though they were certainly still employed. Thus, Kesey’s critique isn’t focused specifically on the primitive barbarism that marks the history of psychiatry (though the barbarism is certainly present); rather, he focuses more on the insidious oppression he felt he observed. The patients on the ward are controlled, but controlled in such a subtle fashion that most don’t know they are being coerced. It is McMurphy who arrives to show them the light (though, because we can never get in his head, we never know his angle; we don’t know, either, whether he has a diagnosis or is merely malingering).
It’s always great when a novel is worthy of deeper exploration. When it has layers upon layers. However, at the end of the day, there also needs to be some level of entertainment factor. That’s what makes this so memorable. It is filled with scenes that come alive in the imagination, and stay in your memory. There is, for instance, a big set piece where the inmates take a “field trip” on a fishing boat. The scene is played for big laughs but also subtle poignancy. When I read it, it gave me a rare exhilaration, like I felt the first time I watched The Shawshank Redemption.
McMurphy laughs. Rocking farther and farther backward against the cabin top, spreading his laugh out across the water – laughing at the girl, at the guys, at George, at me sucking my bleeding thumb, at the captain back at the pier and the bicycle rider and the service station guys and the five thousand houses and the Big Nurse and all of it. Because he knows you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy. He knows there’s a painful side; he knows my thumb smarts and his girl friend has a bruised breast and the doctor is losing his glasses, but he won’t let the pain blot out the humor no more’n he’ll let the humor blot out the pain.
The ending, too, is unforgettable and near-perfect. The movie has made this denouement iconographic, but I think it works far better on the page than on the screen.
To be sure, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is flawed at times, especially in tone. There are several ugly strains running throughout the book, including casual racism, misogyny, and violence against women. I’m not going to defend this by saying the book is “a product of its time.” I will note, though, that some of it is idiomatic, meaning it is the product of the imperfect world view of the storyteller. Still, several scenes, which were probably meant to elicit certain responses, definitely don’t play as well today.
These unsettling aspects do not fatally detract from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Indeed, the sense of unsettledness is pervasive, almost a calling card. The humor and the violence and the sadness and the joy and the discomfort are all of a piece. They do not mesh together perfectly, just as they do not mesh perfectly in real life. That, for me, is why this is a masterpiece. Literature Fiction (Book 436 From 1001 Books) - One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962) is a novel written by Ken Kesey.
Set in an Oregon psychiatric hospital, the narrative serves as a study of the institutional processes and the human mind as well as a critique of behaviorism and a celebration of humanistic principles.
Bo Goldman adapted the novel into a 1975 film directed by Miloš Forman, which won five Academy Awards.
The book is narrated by Chief Bromden, a gigantic yet docile half-Native American patient at a psychiatric hospital, who presents himself as deaf and mute.
Bromden’s tale focuses mainly on the antics of the rebellious Randle Patrick McMurphy, who faked insanity to serve his sentence for battery and gambling in the hospital rather than at a prison work farm.
The head administrative nurse, Nurse Ratched, rules the ward with absolute authority and little medical oversight. She is assisted by her three day-shift orderlies and her assistant doctors and nurses.
McMurphy constantly antagonizes Nurse Ratched and upsets the routines of the ward, leading to endless power struggles between the inmate and the nurse.
He runs a card table, captains the ward's basketball team, comments on Nurse Ratched's figure, incites the other patients to conduct a vote about watching the World Series on television, and organizes a deep-sea fishing trip wherein the patients were going to be supervised by prostitutes.
After claiming to be able, and subsequently failing, to lift a heavy control panel in the defunct hydrotherapy room (referred to as the tub room), his response—But at least I tried—gives the men incentive to try to stand up for themselves, instead of allowing Nurse Ratched to take control of every aspect of their lives.
The Chief opens up to McMurphy, revealing late one night that he can speak and hear.
A violent disturbance after the fishing trip results in McMurphy and the Chief being sent for electroshock therapy sessions, but such punishment does nothing to curb McMurphy's rambunctious behavior.
...
عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «پرواز بر فراز آشیانه فاخته»؛ «دیوانه از قفس پرید»؛ نویسنده: کن کیسی؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش روز ششم ماه اکتبر سال 2005میلادی
عنوان: پرواز بر فراز آشیانه فاخته؛ نویسنده: کن کیسی؛ مترجم: سعید باستانی؛ تهران، نیل، 1355؛ در 332ص؛ چاپ دوم 1357؛ چاپ دیگر تهران، هاشمی؛ 1384؛ در 368ص؛ شابک 9647199090؛ موضوع داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده 20م
عنوان: دیوانه از قفس پرید؛ نویسنده: کن کیسی؛ مترجم: امیر اسماعیلی؛ تهران، توسن، 1368؛ در 170ص؛
داستان در بیمارستانی روانی، در ایالت «اورگن آمریکا» میگذرد؛ و نگاهی به ساختارهای قدرت، در سازمانهاست؛ همچنین رمان به نقد مکتب روانشناسیِ رفتارگرایی میپردازد، و اصول انسانی را میستاید؛ نویسنده ی داستان، مدتی را به عنوان کارمند بیمارستان روانی، در «منلو پارک کالیفرنیا» سپری کرده بودند، و نسبت به بیماران روانی، احساس همدردی میکردند؛ این رمان نخستین بار، در سال 1963میلادی بصورت نمایشنامه به بازار آمد، اما برداشت بسیار مشهورتر از آن، فیلم «دیوانه از قفس پرید» است، که در سال 1975میلادی، با کارگردانی «میلوش فورمن»، و بازی «جک نیکلسون»، بر اساس همین داستان، ساخته شده است؛ فیلم برنده ی پنج جایزه اسکار شد؛ پیش از خوانش کتاب، فیلم «دیوانه از قفس پرید» را در آن سالهای دهه ی شصت از سده ی چهاردهم هجری خورشیدی بارها در «تهران» دیده بودم؛
هشدار: اگر هنوز این کتاب را نخوانده اید و میخواهید خود آن را بخوانید، لطفا از خوانش چکیده داستان خوددداری فرمایید
چکیده: داستان از زبان بیمار روانی دورگه ی سرخپوست-سفیدپوست قوی هیکل اما بی جربزه ای به نام «چیف برامدون» روایت میشود؛ «برامدون» وظیفه نظافت راهروها و سالنهای بخش را دارد، و به همین خاطر لقبش «چیف بروم» (بروم به معنی جارو) شده است؛ چون «برامدون» خودش را به کری و لالی زده است، میتواند به رازهای بین کارکنان آسایشگاه پی ببرد؛ پدر «برامدون» رئیس یکی از قبایل سرخپوست بوده، که با زنی سفیدپوست (مادر «چیف برامدون») ازدواج کرده بود؛ در پی احداث سد آبی بر رودخانه «کلمبیا» قبیله «چیف» از سکونتگاهشان بیرون رانده شده اند، و پدر «برامدون» نیز، که زمانی قوی هیکل و شجاع بوده، به مردی شکست خورده، و الکلی بدل شده است؛ «برامدون» از قدیمیترین بیماران روانی آسایشگاه است، و با وجود سابقه ی ورزشکاری، و یادگیری الکترونیک، پس از شرکت در جنگ جهانی دوم، به بیماری روانی، مبتلا شده است؛ «برامدون» گاهگاهی از دنیای واقعی کاملاً بریده میشود، و به گفته ی خودش «در مه غلیظ فرو میرود»؛
آسایشگاه روانی به ظاهر زیر نظر یک دکتر روانشناس اد��ره میشود، اما قدرت واقعی در دست «پرستار بزرگ» هست؛ «پرستار میلدرد رچد»، مشهور به پرستار بزرگ، پرستاری پنجاه ساله و مجرد هست، که با انضباطی بسیار خشک، و با منکوب کردن بیماران و کارکنان، و شرمسار کردن آنها در برابر دیگران، همه چیز را (حتی دکتر روانشناس را) تحت کنترل دارد، و آسایشگاه را با کمترین نیروی انسانی، در مقایسه با آسایشگاههای مشابه اداره میکند؛ زیردستان فرمانبر پرستار «رچد» از سه کارمند سیاهپوست، و یک دختر پرستار جوان مجرد، شکل گرفته است؛ نام «رچد» یادآور (چرخ جغجغه) هست، که تنها در یک جهت، اجازه چرخش میدهد، و با هر حرکتی، باعث سفتتر شدن طناب مهار میشود؛ قهرمان اصلی داستان یک زندانی عادی به نام «رندال مک مورفی» هست؛ «مک مورفی» از کهنه سربازهای جنگ «کره» بوده، که به جرم تجاوز، به دلیل همخوابگی با دختری جوانتر از حد قانونی، محکوم به زندان گردیده؛ اما برای فرار از کار اجباری در زندان معمولی، ادعای دیوانگی کرده، تا بتواند دوران بی دردسری را، در آسایشگاه روانی بگذراند؛ به زودی شخصیت پر انرژی «مک مورفی» و شخصیت سرد و خشک پرستار «رچد»، با هم برخورد میکنند؛ «مک مورفی» سلطه ی «مادرسالارانه» پرستار بزرگ، و جو نادوستانه، ناشاد، و پر از استرس آسایشگاه را نمیپسندد، و تغییراتی را در اداره آسایشگاه خواستار میشود، که به بهانه های گوناگون با مخالفت و مقاومت «پرستار بزرگ» روبرو میشود
با این وجود «مک مورفی» منصرف نمیشود، و اقدامات مختلفی در راستای شادی بخشیدن و ایجاد اعتماد به نفس در بین بیماران روانی انجام میدهد؛ یکبار «مک مورفی» ادعا میکند، که هر وقت اراده کند، میتواند میز سنگین (کنترل پنل فولادی-بتنی) دستگاه آب درمانی را، به پنجره ی آسایشگاه بکوبد و به شهر برود، بیماران دیگر شرط میبندد، که او نمیتواند میز را تکان دهد، «مک مورفی» شرط را میپذیرد، و میکوشد که میز را تکان دهد، موفق نمیشود، ولی برمیگردد و به بیماران دیگر میگوید: «لااقل من سعی خودم را کردم»؛ این حرف او، به دیگر بیماران جرئت میدهد که در برابر مشکلات، پیش از تلاش کردن تسلیم نشوند، و در مواجهه با مشکلات، بیشترین تلاش خود را به کار ببرند؛ «مک مورفی» هوشمندانه به راز راوی داستان، «چیف برامدون»، پی برده، و میداند که او خود را به لالی و کری زده است، و دوستی پنهانی بین «مک مورفی» و راوی داستان شکل گرفته است
از نقاط عطف داستان، جاییست که «مک مورفی» پی میبرد، که بر خلاف زندان معمولی، که مدت محکومیت محدودی برایش داشت (شش ماه)، میتوانند او را به طور نامحدود در بیمارستان نگاه دارند، و ترخیص او از بیمارستان روانی، تنها با اراده ی پرستار «رچد» ممکن هست؛ از این پس «مک مورفی» شیوه ی محافظه کارانه ای در پیش میگیرد؛ در این میانه، یکی از بیماران به نام «چارلز چزویک» که از هواداران «مک مورفی» است، به امید همیاری «مک مورفی»، پرستار «رچد» را به چالش میگیرد، اما حمایتی از «مک مورفی» که محافظه کار شده، نمیبیند، و ناامیدانه در استخر بیمارستان خودکشی میکند؛ پس از آن رویداد، «مک مورفی» تصمیم میگیرد که محافظه کاری را کنار بگذارد، و خطر باقی ماندن در بیمارستان را بجان بخرد
از اقدامات دیگر «مک مورفی» میتوان به تلاش او برای دیدن مسابقات «بیس بال» از تلویزیون آسایشگاه، یا برنامه ریزی سفر با کشتی ماهیگیری اشاره کرد؛ در این سفر، یکی از دوستان «مک مورفی»، دختری تنفروش به نام «کندی» به او یاری میکند، که بیماران را، از بیمارستان به بندرگاه ببرد، و با بیماران همسفر میشود؛ سفر موفقیت آمیز است، و یکی از بیماران، «جورج سورنسون» که ماهیگیر، و ناخدای ماهری است یاری میکند، که بیماران با موفقیت در ماهیگیری، احترام مردم بندرگاه را، کسب کنند؛ در آن ماجرا یکی از زندانیان به نام «بیلی بیبیت» که مردی خجالتی، مبتلا به لکنت زبان، و کم تجربه در برابر زنان است، به «مک مورفی» اظهار میدارد که از «کندی» خوشش آمده است؛ پس از آن، «مک مورفی» برگشتن «کندی» به آسایشگاه را، برنامه ریزی میکند، و حتی در جایی، از فرار چشم پوشی میکند، تا آن برنامه اجرا شود؛ در روز موعود «کندی» به همراه یکی از دوستان دخترش، به آسایشگاه میآید؛ «مک مورفی» با رشوه دادن به نگهبان شب آسایشگاه، زنان را به داخل آسایشگاه میآورد، و جشن بزرگی را در آسایشگاه برگزار میکند؛ مقدمات هم بستری «بیلی بیبیت» با «کندی» فراهم میشود، و «بیلی» بکارتش را از دست میدهد؛ صبح روز بعد، «پرستار بزرگ» به ماجرای شب پیش پی میبرد، و از جمله به بازجویی از «بیلی بیبیت» میپردازد، «بیلی» برای نخستین بار بدون لکنت کلام صحبت میکند، اما «پرستار بزرگ» آن بهبودی را نادیده میگیرد، و تهدید میکند، که ماجرای شب پیش را به «مادر بیلی» خبر خواهد داد؛ «بیلی» که از مادر خویش بسیار حساب میبرد، اقدام به خودکشی میکند؛ پرستار بزرگ، «مک مورفی» را مسئوول جان «بیلی» میداند، و در برابر «مک مورفی» کنترل خود را از دست میدهد، و به پرستار بزرگ، یورش میبرد، و یونیفورم او را پاره میکند، و میکوشد که گلوی او را بدرد؛ پرستار بزرگ، پس از مدتی به آسایشگاه برمیگردد، اما آسیب وارد شده به حنجره اش، قدرت کلام او را کاسته است؛ پرستار «رچد» دیگر از سوی بیماران جدی گرفته نمیشود، و مجبور هست با بیماران که در برابرش جری شده اند سازش کند؛ بسیاری از بیماران هم که به طور داوطلبانه در بخش مانده بودند آنجا را ترک میکنند و به جامعه بازمیگردند
در برابر یورش «مک مورفی»، به دستور پرستار بزرگ، او را مورد عمل جراحی «لوبوتومی (ایجاد دو سوراخ در ناحیه پیشانی برای خارج نمودن بخشهایی از مغز)» قرار میدهند، و به انسانی بیاحساس، با زندگی گیاهی، بدل میکنند؛ «چیف برامدون» این وضع زندگی برای «مک مورفی» را برنمیتابد، و از آنجا که نمیخواهد، تن بیروح «مک مورفی» به مظهر شکست مقاومت، در برابر پرستار تبدیل شود، او را به قتل میرساند، و با پرتاب میز سنگین آب درمانی به پنجره ی آسایشگاه، قفس را میشکند، و به سوی آزادی پرواز میکند؛
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 11/08/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 29/05/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی Literature Fiction It´s not as if MKUltra was the worst thing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra
Because at least it ended.
And we won´t imagine all still secret, ongoing, and future brainwashing programs, sci fi has many marvelous madnesses regarding mind penetration. But what has been and still is done to mentally sick patients is a prime example of
When the cure is far worse than the illness
Because electroshocks, deprivation, far too hard drugs (we´re not talking about the stuff necessary to reduce hallucinations, the dangers for the patients themselves and others, etc) to keep patients calm and submissive, etc. are no medicine. That´s a combination of very bad psychiatry, that has nothing to do with a modern, interdisciplinary combination of neuroscience, brain surgery, and strongly imaging modality, AI, and big data fueled psychiatry, and sheer greed. Because, how surprising,
Some people are making very much money with mentally sick people
Just as the prison industrial complex loving mass incarceration and draconic laws to get enough customers, everyone selling and producing drugs, building mental asylums, imagining new mental illnesses to sell them, and oneself as the only one able to teach and cure, sees very sick people as cash cows. Besides that, Kesey is of course also
Showing society the consequence of intolerance
Discrimination, hate, and ignorance, fueled by the incompetence and greed of mentioned entities, created the argumentation for and belief that any
Mentally sick people, but also nonconformists and weirdos have bad working brains that need to be repaired
So give them a cure like, let´s say, a . By that, they´re not just less dangerous in the hellholes we threw them into, they are costing less. Not so much damage and work for the medical personnel, so that they can fully focus on expanding their
Dark empath emperor kingdom
How many there might be is as open as the question of how many sociopaths, psychopaths, narcissists, anti social disorderists/paths, etc. people are out there, but they are a freaking new way to manipulate. So 1 in 50, 100, or 500 people working in medical and social jobs might be the best hidden, undetectable, and totally credible monster. Because they can create real emotions for MRI detectors, learn how to act and create their according mimic, read much about medicine, psychology, and psychiatry, and have an education in one of these fields, they´re the ultimate and perfect wolf in sheep´s clothing. Nobody will see them coming, because nobody suspects them to do so. Nurse Ratched's obvious and clumsy sadistic torture methods are kindergarten in comparison.
Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...
A wiki walk can be as refreshing to the mind as a walk through nature in this completely overrated real life outside books:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor... Literature Fiction This modern classic book overshadowed by the modern classic Jack Nicholson movie of the same name, still packs a punch at face value... the story of a cocksure womanising drifter who feigns insanity to avoid imprisonment and finds himself compelled to fight against the regime of a mental hospital ward run by the 'dark' Nurse Ratched; he also strives for his fellow inmates to get more out of their lives.
So lovable anti-hero versus evil domineering nurse, who is allowed to abuse her power because of the way the state is complicit in its desertion of the mentally unwell - BUT WAIT A MINUTE - lead character McMurphy was convicted of statutory rape and justly sentenced, then FAKED insanity and got himself committed. Apparently despite women and Black people by far the worse abused by American mental health institutions over many decades - we have to side with and feel for all these poor White men, including the doctor on the ward at the mercy of this 'evil women' and her Black henchmen. What!!!!!! Even worse the White men are given somewhat fleshed out characterisations (including the doctor), while Nurse Ratched, her Black staff and all the supporting female cast are one-dimensional cut-outs. Big hoo hah, that the narrator is Native-American... I mean for Heavens sake they called him 'Chief'!
Oh but it was the sign of the times? STOP! A few other books written in 1962 - Travels with Charley: In Search of America, Another Country, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, The Death of Artemio Cruz, Island, Something Wicked This Way Comes etc.
I give a 6 out of 12 for this debut novel, a study of the boundaries and similarities between insanity and sanity! A bit weird having a female nurse and Black Men as the bad guys, when this was written in 1960's America, where both had limited power!
Literature Fiction I just watched an interview with Stephen Fry and he mentioned this book. Read it a long long time ago. Read it for highschool already I think. Remember being shocked and amazed. Scary, funny, dark and wonderful at the same time. Un-be-lievable. And I just realized this is one of the best and impressive books I ever read. Definitely a top tenner ever. Literature Fiction