Ken Kesey- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Penguin Modern Classics

Ken Kesey

1962

“Never before did I realize that mental illness could have the aspect of power, power. Think of it: perhaps the more insane a man is, the more powerful he could become. Hitler an example. Fair makes the old brain reel, doesn't it?”

Forgive me for becoming too introspective on this, but reviewing an undoubted cultural classic like Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest always seems an awkward proposition- particularly if the reviewer hasn't read it before, nor indeed anything by that author. The problem isn't the need to theoretically try and critically ravage a classic book, because that's not particularly hard at all; you just need to become as obnoxious as possible and target the legions of people who, over time, have built up its acclaim. No, the problem becomes the effect of slight criticism (nitpicking, essentially), and the art of portraying it as, in your opinion, only a four star book rather than five, since it's so, so easy to casually  publicly overrate popular things out of general kindness and the will to succumb to popular opinion. Goodreads is a testament to all of this, a database where legions of casual readers constantly give five stars to contemporary pieces of utter shit, distorting the overall review scores compared to genuine classics that suffer through being more challenging to read and absorb.

Ken Kesey

With that said, I should mention that I gave Cuckoo's Nest four out of five stars on Goodreads, which I know should (if they ever see it) upset a few people I know who consider it to be an undeniable five star classic of American literature; one of the defining novels of the entire nation and up there with books like The Great Gatsby and Slaughterhouse-Five in both quality and influence. In regards to its cultural influence, I can one hudnred percent understand how that's true, despite my relatively short experience with it (I've never seen the even more famous 1975 film adaptation so the story was totally new to me).  I like to view the scope of twentieth century American literature as an incomplete puzzle, where the missing pieces are impossible to define until properly explored, after which it's impossible to view the puzzle without them, and in that respect Cuckoo's Nest is a vitally important piece.

Written within a framework I increasingly respect (through novels like the aforementioned Gatsby, and W. Somerset Maugham's The Moon and Sixpence), where the narrator shares and maybe even relinquishes the role of main character to another messianic figure, Cuckoo's Nest introduces a very memorable and sympathetic cast of mental asylum patients trapped in a repressive, dictatorial facility where the staff use the patients' syndromes as aides to keep them in line. The stoic, silent Chief Bromden narrates the novel as a long-time Native American resident who has fooled his fellow residents and staff into thinking he is a deaf mute, all the while listening and observing their conversations. When McMurphy, a sane convict who successfully argued his way into what he thought would be an easier internment, becomes his new room mate, Bromden witnesses first hand his attempts to lift his new associates from the repressive doom and gloom of their lives- putting McMurphy into direct conflict with the head nurse, the manipulative Mrs. Ratchford.

From this point on, the book becomes about the battle of wills between McMurphy and Ratchford,  essentially representing liberal and conservative viewpoints. McMurphy is an initially reluctant hero, but who grows as a leader through his friendships with his fellow inmates like Bromden, all of whom respond positively to McMurphy's own form of mental health treatment. Kesey's key themes are essentially very, very simple, easy to follow from the very beginning of the novel and equally as easy to sympathise with. The events of the plot are fairly low-key (until closer to the ending, of course), with a strong focus on characterisation. As the narrator, Chief Bromden grows in confidence and self-respect as McMurphy pushes him to do so, and Bromden's understanding of the system in which he lives in become clearer and stronger.

By making Bromden a Native American, Kesey further establishes a tone of injustice in regards to how the 'combine' (referring to the faceless figures in charge) exists as a system to repress those it deems ill-fitting. As a moral thesis, Kesey's writing is easy to understand and agree with, but then in fairness didn't really go very much further than that. He seems to have the ideals of a George Orwell, but limits the scope of his fiction to embellish the effect on individual human lives, which is part of the reason I don't feel this book hits the heights of premier American literature.

Stylistically, the tone is somewhere between Orwell and John Steinbeck, but I felt that Kesey's prose lacked the effortless majesty of those I consider the best. As a result it was fairly easy to read without too much thought, for better and for worse. The constant human interest and strong character development goes further towards that, but, again. is limited. Perhaps I'm being too unfair considering that Kesey and this novel exists as a bridge between the beatnik generation of the 50's and the unmitigated hippies of the 60's- but even considering that I felt Kesey's prose and stylistic standards to be less adventurous than Jack Kerouac, for example. It's still very good, engrossing, and enjoyable, but didn't have the same impact with me as books by authors with similar reputations, like Vonnegut, Pynchon, or of course Fitzgerald. All of this is a long explanation of why I gave Cuckoo's Nest four stars instead of five on a different website, even though I don't give scores here. In actuality, I very much enjoyed it and could see myself going back to read it again in a few years, as well as reading Ken Kesey's other work.