Karlyflower *The Vampire Ninja, Luminescent Monster & Wendigo Nerd Goddess of Canada (according to The Hulk)*'s Reviews > One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

K, is for Kesey!

This is, yet another, one of those ways I have failed at life.

I first discovered the story of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in high school when I attended a student production of the same name... having a stepmother who is a psych nurse (and being an asshole) I asked her "Are you a Nurse Ratched?" to which she replied by introducing me to the movie with Jack Nicholson (shown below):



- For the record; my stepmom is TOTALLY a Nurse Ratched! -

And then, much later - as an adult, I discovered this was also a book. A book I NEED to read.... an oversight that will be rectified soon, my friends.

REVIEW:

4 Stars

Okay, so first off I am going to elaborate on the above… because I have painted my Stepmother in a very unfair light there. She isn’t a Nurse Ratched in the wholy villainous way. She really isn’t! And her scenario at work is a far cry from the ward depicted in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Although my stepmom IS a psychiatric nurse - one who believes in the system (to a point), who believes in order and consistency AND above all having a very strict relationship with patients – she isn’t a sadist. She doesn’t believe in these things because she wants power or control. She believes in these things because they have, over the years, meant her own survival! You see, my stepmom doesn’t work in any old psych ward; she works in the high-risk criminally insane ward (the place they send those "too crazy" to go to prison) and has done for many years. In such a ward a hiccup in the system could mean a patient or staff member’s life. And trust me when I say that if it came down to those rules or a McMurphy-type character’s happiness my stepmother would WITHOUT A DOUBT bring him under boot. She would HAVE TO!

Onto the story! I loved the use of Chief Bromden as the narrator of this story. Through his unreliable eyes the ward comes to life in a way that no other character narration could have created. It becomes, at times, impossible to know what is only happening in Chief’s mind and what is happening within the realm of the real world. And I think that is so important for the story.

One of the other things I really enjoyed about One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is that we are never actually told what mental illness any of the patients actually have but there are enough glimpses of psychosis that you know many of them actually have illnesses. (Was it common of the time to simply refer to a patient as crazy and diagnose no further?? I think it may have been.)

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 girlfriend 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.

There were so many moments that made me sad in this book. Sad that people hurt each other and cause immeasurable pain in the name of fitting each other into moulds that will never really hold us anyways. Sad to know that things like shock therapy and lobotomies were "tools" used to "aide" the imbalanced at one point in time. And above all hurt that even in these situations where people are asking to be helped by the system, the fingertips of that same system only want control and power over those they view as lesser.

This is a powerful book.