FREE ESSAY ON ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST

ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST

Title: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Author: Ken Kesey
Number of pages: 272
Date of Publication: 1962
Summary
This story, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, consists of many different things. It
contains the mysteries of what goes on inside of a mental institution, the need that the
men in the asylum have for friendship, and the courage the men have when they stood up
against their greatest fear, "the Big Nurse," Mrs. Ratched. This story starts out in an
asylum. All of the men in the asylum are deeply frightened by the head nurse. She is very
forceful and if the men do anything wrong or make her angry in any way they are sent to
shock therapy. One day the men in the institution hear something that they haven't heard
in a long time, laughter. An extremely large, red-headed man walks onto the ward named
Randal McMurphy. The men were so fascinated by him they wanted to know everything about
him. Randal was a big gambler, a thief, and a very courageous man. As soon as he came
onto the ward the Big Nurse knew he would be trouble. McMurphy did everything he could to
try and make the nurse go crazy. He broke almost all of the rules. Randal tried to take
all the other patients money by gambling, planned fishing trips that the nurse was
totally against, fought with the "black boys" (who were assistants on the ward), and gave
the other men courage to stand up against her. Randal even goes to the extent of sneaking
women and alcohol onto the ward. One man named Chief Bromden was McMurphy's best friend.
He was a Chinook Indian. On the ward he swept the floors every day. The authorities on
the ward all thought that the Chief was deaf, but he wasn't. Everyone just assumed that
he was so he just played along. He heard everything that went on in the staff meetings
and what they would say about patients. McMurphy was the only one that knew that Bromden
wasn't deaf. They talked almost every night about their lives before going into the
asylum. The men and the Chief always pushed McMurphy to defy nurse Ratched. One day
Randal couldn't take her anymore. He went up to her nurse's station, broke the glass in
the door, ripped off her nurse's outfit, and started to strangle her.After the incident
McMurphy was suddenly missing off of the ward and no one knew where he was. The nurse
informed the men that he was up in the disturbed ward for the violent people. A couple
weeks later a person was brought into the ward on a hospital bed. The clipboard at the
bottom of the bed said 
"Patient Randal McMurphy-labotomy." The men could not believe that it was him. Randal had
been turned into a vegetable by the hospital. That night Chief Bromden decided that
Randal would have wanted to be put out of his misery so he smothered him with a pillow
and killed him. Chief said his goodbye's to McMurphy, broke out of the hospital, and
searched for the life that was taken from him so long ago by being put in the asylum.
Evaluation: 8.5
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a really good, reality orientated novel. This story
told me about some of the harsh things that really do go on in asylums and mental
institutions. This novel is filled with courage, friendship, and defiance.
The plot of this novel is very well put together. I like how the author fit the
beginning, the middle, and the end together. He started out with talking about how things
went on in the hospital and how the patients were treated. Next he explained McMurphy's
arrival and all of the incidents that happened with Randal and the other patients. Then
he ended it with an unpredictable ending.
I liked how the author made the character, McMurphy, so rebellious and afraid of nothing.
He makes Randal unstoppable but he also shows the side of McMurphy that is compassionate
and friendly. For example, the patients were tired of being pushed around by nurse
Ratched so they bet McMurphy that no matter how hard he tried he couldn't "Get her goat."
Randal tried as hard as he could and it didn't seem to work. Then he was getting tired of
all of the patients just expecting him to be the "hero," that he went crazy and tried to
choke the nurse. At the end it showed that McMurphy was no different than anyone else by
him becoming so vulnerable because of the lobotomy that was performed on him by the
hospital. This tells me that if you depend on someone so much to do something for you
that will make your life easier then you really might be causing damage to that person.
They will try so hard to keep up their "hero" status that it makes them go crazy.
The end of this novel was very good and it surprised me. I thought that McMurphy was
going to stay on the ward forever and keep bugging the nurse until she finally gave up.
If you really think about it the nurse got the best of him in the end. She was the one
who made the plans to turn Randal into a vegetable and it made her life a lot easier. The
Chief's actions when he killed Randal were very noble. The Chief knew that McMurphy would
not have liked to live that way so he did what he thought was best for him by killing
him. That tells me that Chief Bromden was a true friend to McMurphy and no matter how
much it hurt him by killing McMurphy that it was for the best.
This novel was different than any that I have ever read before. It actually felt like I
was inside of the hospital and watching the whole thing instead of reading it. The ending
was sad, but I thought that it was very good. Overall this was a good story because of
all the essential elements the author included to make it that way.