One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kessey (Part 1 - Part 2)

The book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is narrated on the perspective of Chief Bromden, a hallucinated man that pretends to be dumb and deaf only to hear about the little secrets going on inside the mental hospital in which the book takes place at.  Randle McMurphy is introduced and we find out that he got arrested and was sent to the psychiatric ward. Nurse Ratched is the villain in the book because she is controlling and everything goes the way she wants otherwise the patients pay the consequences. She is very strict and keeps everything running smoothly and organized. McMurphy is a manipulator just like Nurse Ratched and they both try to break each other and take charge.

                So far, I am enjoying the book because of all the strange things that happens and the things that each individual patient does in the hospital . It makes me wonder if actual hospitals are like Chief describes the ward. Kesey makes the tone of the book seem serious but spices things up by adding humor to it. One of the things I really like about the book is the symbolism. Although Kesey doesn’t exactly say, “Hey, look this is important,” he somehow makes it pop at you by adding animals into the story. For example, the dog going towards the car that Chief saw outside the window right after he noticed that he no longer saw the fog symbolized that if you try to defeat society, in this case Nurse Ratched or the Combine, you may risk your life in the process. Another example was the white whales on McMurphy’s boxers. They symbolized rebellion. The whales are compared to Moby Dick and the wanting of freedom, the freedom and control that McMurphy wants.

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