One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest was an extraordinary book that I would recommend to absolutely anyone. If you have ever thought of what it would be like to be a little crazy, this book can show you the way. The setting is in an Oregon psychiatric hospital where many patients, some crazy and some not, are striving to become sane again. The narrator of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a half Indian named Bromden. He has been a patient at the psychiatric hospital for ten years and through out his stay he suffers from Paranoia. Some times he has some hallucinations and delusions that can be quite complicated. By complicated I mean that it was hard for me to distinguish if his interpretations of life were a reality or just a mere figment of the imagination. His foremost fear is some thing that He calls a Combine. He thinks that either some one or some thing is controlling society and all of the people in it. The “Combine”, according to Bromden, is trying to conform all people so that they are the same as each other. He also thinks that the people who do not conform, including him, are sent to psychiatric hospitals because they have realized the truth and they need to be conformed again. A new member of the hospital, Randle McMurphy, was sent to the hospital because he has been in a lot trouble in the past. He made his judge think that he was a psycho so he could go to the hospital instead of a jail. Randle becomes the books protagonist and soon one of the main characters. He is a very large con man, which knows a lot about street life and gambling. When he gets to the hospital he starts to Rebel against the head nurse, Nurse Ratched. Randle soon becomes the “god” to all of the other patients. He becomes their main leader and they would do any thing for him. Randle’s fun and games with the nurse soon turns into a full out rebellion with all of the patients. The patients love Randles leadership and strive for him to commit riskier and riskier protest. Randle also wants to heal the patients in his own way. One day he takes them out fishing to show them that they don’t have to be scarred of the “outside world.” The patients are blown away at how they can accomplish catching a fish all by themselves. They love the day out and Randle realizes that the only thing they need to be healed is love and fun. Randle also sets up one of the patients, Billy Bibbit, to lose his virginity with a prostitute. Nurse Ratched, the head of the hospital ward, is a former army nurse. She constantly torments the patients and encourages them to torture each other also. Instead of helping her patients she wakens them by a program that is designed to ruin their self esteem. This book is so amazing and I only scratched the surface of its amazing plot. Any one who has the slightest interest in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest should stop what they are doing at this very moment, even stop reading this blog, go get the book at the library right now!