Ken Kesey Novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest” Summary
The cult book of the American writer Ken Kesey was published in 1962 and is rightfully considered one of the best of the “flower children” era.
His influence on the worldview of an entire generation is difficult to overestimate. A year later, the novel was adapted for the theater. In 1975, the Oscar-winning film of the same name, directed by Milos Forman and starring Jack Nicholson, was released. At the beginning of the third millennium, Time included Kesey's most famous work in its list of the hundred best English-language works of the last century.
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A very short retelling of the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
The events described in the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (this combination comes from a children's rhyme) take place in a psychiatric hospital in Salem in Oregon. The narrator is one of her patients, a tall Indian nicknamed the Leader. This character poses as a deaf-mute, which helps him to be a silent observer and analyst of the events taking place inside the establishment. The brightest character in the novel is the peculiar patient Randle McMurphy. He was transferred to a mental hospital from prison, and, most likely, is feigning a mental disorder in order to avoid hard labor. The other characters are presented by the author no longer as mentally ill people, but as normal people isolated from a deeply sick society.
Summary of the film “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (1975):
A new patient, Randle McMurphy, is admitted to a psychiatric clinic (in American slang, cuckoo's nest) to undergo an examination for mental disorders. He is a criminal under investigation. There are 18 people in the department with him, only three of whom are being treated forcibly, the rest live in the hospital of their own free will.
McMurphy's first appearance at the clinic
The rules established in the hospital by the elder sister are very strict. McMurphy didn't like them. The dull kingdom of eternal sorrow and monotony quickly tires him. He entertains himself as best he can: at cards he wins cigarettes for the entire department for a month in advance; teaches a deaf-mute Indian, huge as a rock, named Chief to play basketball; steals a bus from a walk and goes fishing on a boat with new friends; makes attempts to escape by tearing off a water tap and breaking a window with bars; throws a night party, after which one of the patients commits suicide.
For all his pranks, he receives a well-deserved punishment for such establishments: they turn him into a “vegetable” - an immobile something, an unconscious, emotionless creature. It is in this state that his faithful friend the Leader is waiting for him, but, seeing the helplessness of his idol, he decides to run away alone. But so that NO ONE sees Randel’s dementia, the Leader simply smothers him with a pillow, tears off the water tap, breaks the window with bars and leaves the hospital to freedom... Alone...
McMurphy's dream come true and was able to leave the walls of the closed institution
List of characters and characteristics of the heroes of the novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”
The list of main characters in the book includes:
- Bromden, nicknamed the Leader , is a huge patient. Born in the union of a white woman and an Indian. He pretends to be deaf and dumb and weak-minded, escaping from the harsh American reality.
- Randle Patrick McMurphy is a freedom-loving guy who ended up in a mental hospital on the initiative of the prison authorities. A rebel by nature, a regular in prison, he served time in a colony. He tries to stir up the inert patients who have resigned themselves to their fate, tries to teach some of them, not the most hopeless, to enjoy life.
- Miss Gnusen is a nurse who enters into a moral battle with McMurphy. He is the personification of the soulless System. Her personal life did not work out, which manifests itself in despotism when communicating with patients.
Among the other heroes of the novel are the medical staff of the clinic and its inhabitants - Mr. Harding , Billy Bibbit , Cheswick and many others.
History[ | ]
The title of the book was the last line of a children's rhyme [1] (the last two lines are also included in the epigraph):
Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn,
Apple seed, and apple thorn; Wire, brier, limber lock, Three geese in a flock, One flew east, one flew west,And one flew over the cuckoo's nest.
Russian variant:
Do not blink.
Don’t yawn, don’t blink, The aunt is fishing for the chickens, The geese are flying across the sky... There are three geese in a whole flock... They are flying to different parts, Some from home, some to the house, Some over the cuckoo’s nest... The goose shouts to you: drive...Two-three, come out. translation by Andrey Sergeev
The novel was adapted for the stage by Dale Wasserman in 1963.
The famous 1975 film adaptation of the novel was criticized by Ken Kesey, in particular due to the fact that in the film the “narrator”, who is Chief Bromden in the novel, was relegated to the background.[ source not specified 829 days
]
Time magazine included the novel in its list of the 100 best English-language works from 1923 to 2005.[2]
The novel was repeatedly subject to attempts to be banned in the United States of America, along with such works as “The Great Gatsby”, “Ulysses” and “The Catcher in the Rye”[3].
Summary of the novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest” in detail in parts
Part 1
The story is told from the perspective of a tall Indian, Bromden, nicknamed Chief. He is also called a “mop” because he has to constantly sweep the floor. Bromden's stay in a psychiatric hospital has been going on for more than a year, and he has made certain conclusions: the system of keeping sick and mentally unstable people in America does not help them, but disfigures and cripples them even more. Correction is carried out using a unique technique, with the help of which many patients return to normal life completely depressed and weak-willed.
Much in the institution changes when the cheerful Randle Patrick McMurphy, a shirtless guy, a tramp who managed to serve more than one sentence in prison, gets into it. McMurphy impressed the authorities of the colony where he had recently been staying as a psychopath, and they decided to put him in a mental hospital. Randle himself was only pleased with the turn in fate: he was going to have a fun time here, sit it out, and earn a little money playing card games with naive patients.
The medical staff is trying to flaunt their liberal principles. Allegedly, all problems that arise with patients are solved democratically. Meetings are held here, the opinion of almost everyone is carefully listened to, the administration conducts excursions around their establishment, demonstrating that the wards are well fed, and the staff is attentive to them. All problems are resolved by voting on the council, headed by Harding, a man with a higher education.
McMurphy immediately comes into conflict with the head nurse, Miss Gnusen. He, in the opinion of the strict lady, disrupts the measured life of the community, beats patients at cards, cynically ridicules meetings at which, under the control of an imperious woman, patients discuss the personal lives of certain patients. McMurphy encourages his comrades to escape by breaking the window and tearing the screen with a heavy remote control. In the heat of the moment, he bets that he may well be able to accomplish this. When the idea failed, Randle said he at least tried.
The television became a new stumbling block in the confrontation between McMurphy and Miss Vile. A man asks to disrupt his viewing schedule for the baseball championship. A vote is taken, and twenty of the forty people in the department are in favor of McMurphy's proposal. However, the sister explains: a majority of at least one vote is not enough to make a decision; she does not take into account the fact that the remaining twenty patients do not understand anything at all. The Leader belatedly raises his hand - that’s it, the meeting is declared closed. Then McMurphy voluntarily turns on the “box” and does not leave it even when Miss Gnusen unplugs the TV. He and his associates “watch” baseball on a blank screen.
Part 2
It took a little time for the doctors to be convinced that they would suffer with McMurphy; among themselves they call him “the disorder factor.” A proposal comes up to transfer the troubled patient to the violent ward, but Miss Gnusen does not allow it. The woman herself needs to morally break him, prove to everyone in the department that the ideological enemy is not a rebel hero at all, but just an egoist trying to achieve personal comfort.
Meanwhile, McMurphy's influence on other patients is growing. The leader notices that the “repressive machine” is malfunctioning. There has never been such a positive atmosphere in the department. However, Bromden soon witnesses how McMurphy's rebellious fervor gradually approaches zero. The thing is that Randle discovered a sad thing for himself: he ended up in a colony for a specific period of time, but he can stay in a mental hospital indefinitely. As the doctors decide, so it will be - his fate is in their hands. Therefore, he is careful in his statements and stops standing up for other patients in the department. But McMurphy’s rebellious spirit “moves” into a patient named Cheswick, who fights with his superiors for the right to smoke cigarettes at any time and in any quantity. Cheswick is sent to the department for violent people, and after returning from there he takes his own life.
McMurphy is shocked by this death, but he is even more amazed by the fact that most of the hospital's patients are not here under duress. He again enters into a fight with Miss Vile and encourages patients to actively express their feelings. McMurphy organizes a basketball tournament, putting together a team of patients against a team of orderlies. And although the psychos ultimately lose, they feel like people for a while. McMurphy soon realizes that the Chief is imitating a deaf-mute. The former prisoner tries to instill self-confidence in Bromden: the Indian, under the guidance of a friend, lifts the remote control higher and higher from the floor.
Part 3
One day, Randle McMurphy decides, instead of taking a bus ride around the city, to go with the whole squad to the sea on a boat to fish. Miss Gnusen's exhortations do not help; the patients are fired up with an exciting idea. The captain of the ship refuses to go to sea without accompanying papers, then the psychos led by McMurphy steal the boat and have a blast!
During the cruise, shy Billy Bibbit meets Candy, McMurphy's girlfriend. The guy really likes the girl. Understanding the feelings of Billy, who needs to assert himself as a man, McMurphy agrees with Candy that she will come to the mental hospital this coming Saturday and sleep with the timid young man.
Part 4
Before Saturday, McMurphy and the Chief get into a fight with the orderlies, which is why they end up in the violent ward and receive electric shocks. Randle returns to his comrades before the weekend and prepares to meet Candy with her friend Sandy and a supply of gifts.
A party with alcohol goes beyond what is permitted; the patients, led by McMurphy, destroy Miss Gnusen’s office. Realizing that the initiator of the pogrom and orgy is in trouble, the patients suggest that he hide. McMurphy agrees, but falls asleep from too much alcohol. When he comes to his senses, it becomes impossible to escape - orderlies appear in the department.
Miss Gnusen can hardly contain her rage at the sight of the chaos in the premises, and in addition, she does not find Billy Bibbit in the department. Soon the guy is discovered in a secluded place in the company of a girl. Miss Vile shames Billy and threatens to tell his mother everything, and she will deal with Billy's son properly. He is horrified by this prospect, makes excuses and shouts that he was forced to do this...
Unable to withstand the emotional stress, Billy cuts his throat. Miss Gnusen blames McMurphy for what happened, whom she considers to be involved in the suicides of both Cheswick and Billy. McMurphy attacks the hated woman and strangles her. The orderlies pull the brawler away from the nurse, and she barely comes to her senses.
Gradually, patients are discharged home or transferred to other departments. Only the regulars remain, among them Bromden. The leader witnesses McMurphy turn into a vegetable after being lobotomized. Bromden cannot allow such humiliation of his life-loving friend. He suffocates him with a pillow at night, after which he breaks the barred window with the remote control that McMurphy tried to lift and breaks free.
