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Summary: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest- A Flight to Freedom
Review: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a well-written book about a man named McMurphy. McMurphy is placed in an aslyum because the courts declared him a physcopath. McMurphy isn't insane. He's just looking for a free ride so that he doesn't have to go back to work on the pea farm he was at before he was arrested. Over all, I would recommend One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest to anyone who is looking for a book that touches the mind and tears at the heart. Kesey demonstrates great knowledge of how the human mind works and to what extent a man will go to keep his sanity in an insane world. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest is a definate read. It continues to draw readers into its realm of sanity within insanity. Of human perseverence under a dictator's rule. Of man's indomitable will to survive.
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Summary: The First Time
Review: The first time that I read this book was in the
back of a Grayhound bus from Chicago to San Francisco.
I was a sophmore in college and coming out to visit
my brother for the summer. My journey mates included
a teenage runaway couple from Indiana, two drunken
AWOL sailers heading to Vegas and a kindly old fat lady
who fed us beans and tortillas the whole way. As I read
the book I used to imagine that Kesey was on the back
of the bus taking notes. Read this book. You will
be moved by it. Kesey is a great writer with a knack
for spinning a tale of enlightment.
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Summary: Good, but i [prefer the movie
Review: This is a good read, and its fun to see everything through the eyes of the chief, but Cucoo's nest is one of my favorite movies, and i prefer watching this then reading it. Kesey was a great author, and gthe book is good, it just isn't as good as Jack Nicolson.
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Summary: One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
Review: The book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest written by Ken Kesey, is a entertaining yet disturbing novel. I think the theme of this book is men create their own prisons. The main character of this novel is Randle McMurphy, who ends up to be a hero in the patients' eyes. Nurse Ratched is the conflict in this story. Nurse Ratched controls everything the patients think and do. At the end of this novel one of the characters overcomes her. I hope this review persuades you to read this book.
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Summary: The Cuckoo Review
Review: THIS BOOK ROCKS!! WHOOO!!! eveybody should read this book. Especially if you're feeling a little mentally unstable. Trust me, after reading this book you're gonna wish you were living your life surrounded by padded walls! Alright back to a serious level, the character descriptions in this book couldn't possibly get any better. After just a few chapters you'll feel like you actually know these people. It has a great underlying theme which reminds you to be careful what you wish for. The relationship that develops between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched keeps you wanting to read more and see what could possibly happen next. THIS BOOKS AWESOME!! READ IT!!!
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Summary: Timeless, universal classic
Review: The Viking Critical Library edition of Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" is worth every cent of its price, not that it's a high one anyway. The page count is double that of the novel, and what you get in this excellent edition, is a preface, a short biography, and a plethora of literary criticism, a very exhaustive collection, ranging from forgettable, strained and biased work to brilliant criticism. It's not just a novel, it's a compendium you get for a price of one. I strongly recommend this particular edition of the novel, and would encourage you to keep an eye for other volumes published by the Viking Critical Library. Kesey was not appreciated after his first novel, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". His later novels and stories received abysmal reviews at the time of publication, his life was widely perceived as wasted. In fact, with "The Electric Kool-Aid" Tom Wolfe summarized Kesey as a one-note, one-novel author. Since when quantity is equivalent with quality? The same statement can be made of Joseph Heller and Harper Lee. The latter didn't even try to write more than one novel he published! I claim that that particular novel of Ken Kesey earned him the place in the timeless literary pantheon, that it immortalized the author, and whether or not his fiction of the latter day is redeemable, is a secondary issue, almost irrelevant, I'd say. "One Flew Over Cuckoo's Nest" is indeed a universal novel. Many circles, political movements, ranging anywhere from anarchist and socialist to conservative and libertarian - tried to assimilate Kesey into their ideology, into their vision, whatever that was. A good piece of literature is universal, timeless, with redeeming features that are always true (or untrue, for that matter), whenever they are read, and if they contribute to the reader's development regardless of their generation. "One Flew Over Cuckoo's Nest" was one such book - it dealt with universal truths, with the basic premise of life - that we should be free, no matter what, that if once depraved of dignity, we can't regain it back, and then it's not worth continuing afterwards, that it's a once-only gift from heavens. We can also self-depreciate, too - as an aside note. A very strong moral message the novel conveys is the opposition of the individual and the society. In a way, Kesey's book is similar to John Kennedy Toole's "The Confederacy of Dunces", where a similar point is raised. "One Flew Over Cuckoo's Nest" is an apotheosis of personal freedom, and a warning against the tendencies evident in modern societies. A free individual is disengaged from the society, although coexisting with it on a daily basis. Exactly this point provides a wide arena for interpretation, and if you enjoy analysis of this type, you will definitely appreciate Penguin's critical edition - for there's much material that will satisfy your curiosity, if need be. Abstracting from that usual tendency to stress the individual-system opposition presented in the novel, I think that one of the main threads of interest, for me at least, is the keen observation Kesey makes about the human nature. If given the chance, the animal creeps out from us, and goes wild. No matter how civilized we are, it's always there, lurking. Also, we have oceans of cruelty in us ' maybe not all of us - but a vast majority definitely do. Where we differ - is the degree. Life is not black and white, but grey, all shades of grey. If given the sufficient opportunity, we shall turn against our brethren. I believe in this, and Kesey seems to have at least hinted at that. I won't make a prolonged philosophical digression, although that's the proper playground here, but I do think that we are essentially bad, evil, primitive, with a good side to us, which is like a self-conscious and often automatic chain that holds us in place. Religions superimposed the idea of temptation over that basic premise, and where religions differ is the actual interpretation of symbols. What I find of more value as a lukewarm believer, is the caveman sub-layer of our human nature. Evil and good are not balanced. The former is kept like a genie in a bottle, the more we are civillized, the more so. it is not equilibrium. And from time to time, the evil creeps out, or, rather, bursts out, and then there's trouble. Some people feel right at home with their real nature, and thus are more adept at obtaining the equilibrium. Often devoid of empathy, they execute their wishes if given the chance, and they do so more efficiently than the rest of us - precisely because they are more balanced. I keep coming back to Kesey's Nurse Ratched. If I were to characterize her in one word only, use only one adjective, I'd choose "unemphatic", if there's such a word. "One Flew Over Cuckoo's Nest" is a novel that gives food for thought. It will last you for days, months, or even a lifetime, along with a few other giant works of the XX century. Irrespective of his career of the later day, Kesey is immortal precisely because he conceived that universal novel which gives rise to so many interpretations, is such a fertile work of one man's imagination. And that in addition to the actual excellent storyline! Kesey was a giant for me. May he be blessed with peace forever.
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Summary: Better than the movie and a modern classic
Review: "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" was Ken Kesey's first novel and one of the top ten works of fiction from this past century. Kesey's work in a mental hospital and his LSD research allowed him to write an outstanding tale of fighting against oppression and questioning people's sanity. "Cuckoo's Nest," written from the point of view of a deranged patient in a mental asylum, is the story of a convict who feigns insanity so he can avoid going to a work farm. He quickly learns the ways of the oppressive Nurse Ratched and teaches the weak-willed patients to resist her methods. The novel draws obvious comparisons to the popular Jack Nicholson movie of the same name. The movie presents some of the scenes in a different order, it downplays the role of the book's narrator, Chief Bromden, and it removes all of the Christ-imagery from the story. These elements all gave the literary "Cuckoo's Nest" more impact, and they allowed readers to question the insanity of the inmates as well as the dehumanized nature of the world around them. The rebellion against society that would become a part of Kesey's life was first expressed in the pages of this enjoyable novel. It contains both humor and sadness, as well as a timeless message for those who are wise enough to read it. Highly recommended.
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Summary: The Bull Goose Looney vs. The Combine
Review: Ken Kesey's great accomplishment here is that he's brought a grand sense of authority to this book. He worked for a spell at a similar mental hospital in Oregon, even going so far as to subject himself to shock treatments. These experiences allowed him to add authentic detail to his world, such as the classification of the patients as Chronics, Acutes, Walkers, Wheelers, and, most ominously, Disturbed. The lucid descriptions he provides of each phylum are heartbreaking. Life in his ward world is made up of mindless repetition and routine, where patients are watched over by hapless staff, and institutionalized racism is never given a second thought. All of these aspects of the hospital work together to provide a nifty little microcosm of a radicalized 1960's America. Much of the novel is internalized. Chief Bromden, our humble narrator, begins life as a deaf and dumb Chronic. Only he's got a secret (I'll never tell). The story, as told from the Chief's point of view, is disjointed and fragmented. This is not an ineffective technique, however. In fact, it helps bring the reader into the mind of the insane, because as the Chief suffers through his hallucinations, we get to suffer along with him. Kesey, to his credit, never goes overboard with the Chief's dreamlike states. He works hard to keep the Chief's meanderings intelligible, always getting back to the story just in time before he lost the reader completely in that mania. He lets the Chief reign himself in if only to provide lucid commentary on the events at the hospital. This duality, this schizophrenia, makes the Chief one of the great unreliable narrators of the postmodern age. He's not consciously covering his tracks to make himself look better. He really believes the things he says, even if the reader can't fully. "[What follows is] the truth," he says early on. "Even if it didn't happen." The real strength of "Cuckoo's Nest" is that it not only gives us a strong internal narrative, but the external one is pretty strong as well. Otherwise it would have made for a pretty convoluted movie. Most novels do one well but not the other. The reason that the external portions are strong is that they're anchored on the fate of a truly memorable literary character: Randall Patrick McMurphy. McMurphy, a former work farm employee just new to the hospital, is a more complex character than I thought he'd be. I was expecting from him only unbridled, ego-less action. Instead, he was also quite focused, rational, and well thought out (listen to him cut through Harding's bull, with his neat "'peckin' party" analogy). This brings up one of the novel's central questions: whether or not McMurphy really should be in the asylum, or if he's just faking to get off the work farm (in fact, this question can be asked of all the novel's characters, except, of course, for the Chief. We've been inside his head and can surely testify that not only does he have a few loose screws, but also his screwdriver is broken). This question makes the ending all the more tragic. I'll not give the ending away, but be aware that knowing what ultimately happens to McMurphy didn't lessen the experience for me, and it probably won't for you. Kesey manages to hold the suspense until the reader gets there. When he finally lets go, the shock of it hits you like a fist through a window. The novel's central and scariest truth is that the system (i.e., what the Chief calls "the Combine") can't be beat. That's very much a 1960's attitude, but still relevant in contemporary culture, especially for those of us still trying to make our way in the world. It is personified here by Nurse Ratched, who, no matter how persistent you are as an opponent, will always hold all the cards. And the sad irony is that this fact, once known, makes McMurphy's final punishment seem more like a blessing than a curse.
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Summary: Through The Eyes of a Man Who Dares to be Crazy.
Review: Randall McMurphy arrives at a mental institution after serving a stretch on a State Farm. At the State Farm he faked insanity to get out of the work. Little did he know what awaited him at the institution. Almost from the first minute of his arrival he squares off against the Nurse in an epic battle between good and evil. The asylum represents a very acurate microcosom of the outside world, complete with the "system" pushing them to be who they aren't. Written by acknowledged acid freak Ken Kessey, this book is sure to please all of you anti-establishment hippies out there. But its written so well, it may even entertain a repulbican as well.
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Summary: The real deal
Review: In my opinion, this book is the great American novel. I'll forgo the usual blather about what it all means and why it's so great, but I should point out that it really is just as important and profound now as it was in the early sixties.
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