One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Summary

The novel I chose to read was entitled “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” written by Ken Kesey. First off, It is important to provide some of Ken Kesey’s background in order to better understand why he wrote it. After receiving his bachelor’s degree, Kesey ended up at Stanford in a creative writing program. He ended up volunteering in an experimental drug program where he was used to test the different effects of the drugs at the Local Veterans Administration hospital. This was where he began to experiment with LCSD. During his experimental time, He ended up taking a job as an orderly in the mental institution where he got to witness how the mentally ill were treated by the staff and how the facility was run. He couldn't have written a better

He enters the ward and makes himself known right away. He starts laughing and everyone notices him. McMurphy is a rebel at heart. He is a jokester, a gambler and doesn’t hold his opinions back. This is a sign of trouble for Nurse Ratched due to the fact that all of the patients are dependent on her and submit to her authority whereas McMurphy isn’t scared of authority and doesn’t conform to any rules. McMurphy ends up a positive influence on the patients. Throughout the book, McMurphy stands up to Nurse Ratched and encourages other men to as well. In one of the group therapy sessions, McMurphy points out that Nurse Ratched is trying to exploit their weaknesses through the group therapy sessions in order for them to continue to feel inferior. McMurphy (1962) goes on to state, “people who try to make you weak so they can get you to toe the line, to follow their rules, to live like they want you to. And the best way to do this, to get you to knuckle under, is to weaken you by gettin’ you where it hurts the worst”(p. 51). As the book goes on, you can see the effect McMurphy has on the patients. You see how they start to gain their own independence and being to speak up for themselves. An illustration of this would be when Cheswick, one of the patients on the ward stood up and asked Nurse Ratched why he couldn't have his cigarettes “complaint. “Then what

The book kept me hooked because things were always changing. McMurphy’s character was unpredictable and you never knew what was going to happen next. It was very inspiring to see the change in Chief Bromden as he transitions from being fearful and paranoid to standing up for himself. As far as the weaknesses, I found it hard to understand some of what Kesey was trying to convey through his use of wording. Also, some of the Chief’s thoughts were all over the place which made it difficult for me to keep up with what was being illustrated at the time. I would definitely recommend this book to a person dealing with special populations in the Criminal Justice System. This book is a great illustration of the mistreatment of the mentally ill during that time period and also that some methods used back in the 1960s are still used today in mental hospitals. It would be a great book to use to compare and contrast the treatment of the mentally ill back in the 1960s to how they are treated now. According to Jon Swaine in the article entitled, How 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' changed psychiatry, he shares a statement that Dr. Pittman, a renowned psyschatrist made about the book: “It gave voice, gave life, to a basic distrust of the way in which psychiatry was being used for society's purposes, rather than the purposes of the people who had mental illness”(2011). Also According to Irving