A review by ed_moore
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

challenging dark inspiring medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

“One flew east, One flew west, One flew over the cuckoo’s nest” 

Set in an Oregon mental asylum, ruled over by the tyrannically presented nurse Nurse Ratched, Kesey’s ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ focuses on resistance to authoritative systems in the microcosmically portrayed mental ward with the arrival of the freethinker McMurphy. I’m not sure how to feel about this book, hence my neutral rating, for until the final sequence of events it was quite underwhelming to me but following its conclusion I have found myself reading around the themes and message to great interest. The book was paratexted by Kesey’s psychedelic illustrations, which largely reminded me of the fever dream drawings that made up Thompson’s ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’. In its conclusion the book becomes a protest against the mistreatment of patients in mental hospitals during the 1960’s, and for a period of time I was mellow at the proposed conclusion and as it shifted both felt a heroic liberation yet crushing reality and sacrifice. 

In many places this book had racist and stereotypical descriptions in the presentation of the aides, in addition to outdated language surrounding mental illness, though I enjoyed how the native Indian heritage of the narrator Bromden was handled, and the parallels between the casting aside of the native race when they were unwanted by American society, to the same degree those who don’t fit the mould of society are forgotten within mental hospitals. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Body horror, Chronic illness, Mental illness, Suicide, Forced institutionalization, Medical content, Medical trauma