How the book "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" differs from the film of the same name by M. Foreman

The book is very complex, emotionally heavy, in the process of reading there is a strong feeling that something bad must happen, even when the main characters seem to have left the System and their enemies in the cold. We are accustomed to worship such phrases as: "It is better to die standing than to live on your knees", "Paris is worth a mass", etc., the meaning of which is easily recognizable - for the common good, for the sake of truth, you can give your life, for the sake of a moment of true triumph, you can sacrifice yourself, it is better to rush across the sky with a bright flash than later long years to crawl after one's own shadow... But in this book, the question is, in my opinion, different. There is another phrase that I love very much - weak fate drags on a loop, leads the strong by the hand, and the strongest himself becomes fate. So, this is exactly about the main character of McMurphy's book, a rebel, an individualist, almost a berserker who knows how his rebellion will end, but still goes ahead, into conflict with fate, in order to become it himself. This strong-willed a man, such a sympathetic hooligan and atheist, probably, is constantly included in dozens and hundreds of the best book heroes of our time. Was his rebellion worth that Mass? For a few moments of true freedom, for a couple of sips fresh air and the wind in your hair, probably, yes, it was worth it. McMurphy did not want to die, did not hover on the verge of insanity and sanity, but he found himself in this world, in a closed space of someone else's evil will and the suppression of everything human in people who are destined for only one fate - to be a vegetable, without questions, without worries, without emotions , without fears, without hopes, without fate... The most terrible conflict between a man and a woman is described in this book. Let the Head Sister of the Department serve as the personification big system, which rejects not only really confused minds, but also quite normal, but notorious and frightened people. And the ending was like an explosion - I read these few lines (what happened to McMurphy and what Chief Bromden did) with a pounding heart, the plot led to such a denouement, did anyone think that McMurphy would go far after he destroyed the order in the world of the System ? But, no matter how pathetic it may sound, for some prisoners of the System it became like a banner over their heads, dropped and raised by others, like a battle cry, the words of which I no longer know who composed, but so correct and necessary for the moment of release of this primitive energy - thirst freedom (physical and moral, of course). After reading the book, I read everything about the author, book, movie, lobotomy, Indians, mental hospitals, etc. on Wikipedia. It's been a boring day! You can prepare for this book for a long time and still remain unprepared for its main events and messages. Being kept in a cage in the midst of madness and fear, suppressing the very desire to be a man, breaking the will and lust for life, suggesting one's own uselessness to the world and, as a result, the impossibility of returning to normal relations with the world - all these are the very pitfalls on which the main philosophy is built. novel. And his main axis is the rebel McMurphy. The sister with a face twisted with anger looms somewhere in the background on the last pages of the novel, because for the reader the catharsis has already come with the escape of Chief Bromden, the escape from the System, from madness.

American writer. Known, in particular, as the author of the novel Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Kesey is considered one of the main writers of the Beat Generation and the Hippie Generation, having a major influence in shaping these movements and their culture.

Born in La Junta, Colorado, the son of an oil mill owner. In 1946 he moved to Springfield, Oregon. Kesey's youth was spent on his father's farm in the Willamette Valley, where he grew up and was brought up in a respectable, devout American family. At school and later in college, Kesey was fond of sports and even became a state wrestling champion. After graduation, Ken runs away from home with classmate Faye Haxby. Subsequently, Fei will become the eternal faithful companion of the ideologue of the counterculture and give birth to four children from him.

« Above the cuckoo's nest»

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Novel by Ken Kesey (1962). It is considered one of the main literary works of the beatnik and hippie movements. There are several translations of the novel into Russian.

The novel has been adapted for theatrical performance Dale Wasserman in 1963.

The famous 1975 film adaptation of the novel was criticized by Ken Kesey, in part because the film's "narrator", which is Chief Bromden, is relegated to the background in the film.

Time magazine included this novel in its list of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.

In 1959, Kesey wrote The Zoo, a novel about beatniks living in a commune in North Beach, San Francisco, but it was never published. In 1960 he wrote Late Autumn, about a young man who leaves his working-class family after receiving a scholarship to an Ivy League school, also unpublished.

The idea for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest came to Kesey while working as a night nurse at the Veterans Hospital in Menlo Park. Kesey often spent time talking with patients, sometimes under the influence of hallucinogens he took while participating in experiments with psychedelics. Kesey did not believe that these patients were abnormal, rather society rejected them because they did not fit into the generally accepted ideas about how a person should behave. Published in 1962, the novel was an immediate success; in 1963, it was revised into a successful production by Dale Wasserman; in 1975, Milos Forman directed the film of the same name, which won 5 Oscars ( best movie, Best Director, best actor and Actress in Leading Roles, Best Adapted Screenplay), as well as 28 other awards and 11 nominations.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Summary

The novel is set in a psychiatric hospital in Salem, Oregon. The narration comes from the perspective of the narrator - a huge Indian named Chief Bromden, one of the patients; The leader pretends to be deaf and dumb, which allows him to be present as a silent observer in other people's conversations. One of the main characters of the novel is the free-spirited patient Randle Patrick McMurphy, who is transferred to a psychiatric hospital from prison. He is supposed to have simulated mental disorder just to avoid hard labor. Other patients are presented in the novel, perhaps not as insane, but as normal people rejected by a sick society.

Millred Ratched

McMurphy is confronted by older sister Mildred Ratched, a middle-aged woman who works in a hospital department. The older sister, the personification of the system (the Combine, as the narrator Chief Bromden calls her), whose personal life has not worked out, carefully strengthens her power over the patients and staff of the department. A rebel and an individualist, McMurphy begins to destroy the order arranged by her and has a significant impact on other patients, teaching them to enjoy life and even freeing them from chronic complexes. He makes various bets with other patients, organizes in the department card games, trying to get a World Series baseball game on TV. Contrary to McMurphy's winning vote among the patients, in which the Chief's vote is decisive, Nurse Ratched unplugs the TV, but the patients remain in front of the screen and pretend to watch baseball - this mass defiance causes Nurse Ratched to lose control of herself and break loose.

M acmurphy

McMurphy's self-confidence is undermined by a conversation with a lifeguard at the swimming pool: McMurphy learns that he is one of the few patients who is not voluntarily on the ward, and what's more, Nurse Ratched is able to extend his stay indefinitely. After that, McMurphy temporarily stops the war with Sister Ratched, keeps quiet and does not break the rules of the routine. Patient Cheswick, who saw McMurphy as a powerful ally in the fight against the order prevailing in the department, becomes depressed and drowns himself in the same pool. McMurphy soon returns to the conflict by breaking the glass window at the nurse's post; he arranges a basketball game in the ward, and later a high-seas fishing trip involving ten patients, including the Chief. This trip, although sanctioned by the administration, becomes a happy day outside the hospital for its participants.

Waiting

Later, McMurphy and the Chief get into a fight with the orderlies in the showers, and they are sent for electroshock therapy, which has no significant effect on McMurphy; The leader irrevocably parted with his deaf-mute mask and freely communicates with his comrades. Still later, McMurphy arranges a secret visit of two prostitutes already in the department itself; at the same time, the infantile Billy Bibbit, handed over to the hospital by a despotic mother, loses his virginity with one of the girls, and other patients, along with the night attendant, get drunk so much that in the morning they are unable to either arrange a planned escape for McMurphy or hide the traces of nightly fun. When Sister Ratched threatens to tell Billy everything to his mother, he is horrified and when Billy is left alone in the doctor's office, he cuts his throat with a scalpel. Sister Ratched blames McMurphy for this death - after that, McMurphy loses his temper, beats Sister Ratched and tries to strangle her, but doctors beat her off.

This time, McMurphy is sent for a lobotomy, with which he returns in a vegetative state, having lost his "self" and becoming truly mentally ill. Patients who have become stronger and more courageous thanks to McMurphy, freed from both fears of the "normal" world and from the power of their older sister, leave the hospital one by one. In the finale, Chief suffocates McMurphy with a pillow and escapes the hospital by breaking a window.

Quotes and aphorisms from the book

You won't be truly strong until you learn to see the funny side of everything.

To be saved, you just need to start acting.

So, if you want to be alone, are you sick?

I'm not talking to him, but to myself. It helps me think.

Well, what's up, freaks, lunatics, and defectives?

They gave me 10 kilowatts a day, I recharged nicely, now the women below me will glow like casino lights and sparkle with silver dollars.

Communication has a healing effect. Being alone increases the feeling of alienation.
- So, if someone wants to be alone, then he is sick?

I'm talking about form, content... I'm talking about relationships, I'm talking about god, devil, hell, heaven. Is it clear to you, finally?

Every time he hit the bottle, she drank it, not he her.

You have to laugh at what torments you, otherwise you will not keep your balance, otherwise the world will drive you crazy.

Yes. This I know for sure. A branch is a factory in a combine. Here they correct the mistakes made in the houses in the neighborhood, in churches and schools, the hospital corrects. When a finished product is returned to society fully repaired, no worse than new, or even better, the elder sister's heart rejoices; what arrived dislocated, non-native, is now a serviceable, fitted part, the pride of the entire team, a visual miracle. Watch how he glides along the ground with a soldered smile and smoothly enters the life of a cozy quarter, where trenches are being dug for the city water supply. And happy with it. Finally aligned...

The novel Ken Kesey (1935—2001) "Above the Cuckoo's Nest" (1962).

Kesey is a notorious figure in American literature. He was born in La Junta, Colorado, graduated from the University of Oregon, attended Stanford University, but dropped out after becoming embroiled in a risky venture: as a voluntary (and paid) test subject, he took part in experiments with LSD conducted as part of a scientific program research into the possibilities of drug use in psychiatric practice. The program was soon shut down by the government, but Kesey remained in the psychiatric hospital for another six months as an orderly and night watchman. Out of this experience grew the novel "Over the Cuckoo's Nest", bright, complex, technically perfect, absolutely original and incredibly relevant.

The merits of the book cannot be explained by any properties creative individuality author - none of the subsequent works, in which Kesey unsuccessfully imitated himself, even approximately corresponded to the artistic level of the first novel by a non-professional writer. As if the epoch that had just begun, disturbing, conflicting, contradictory, chose this unremarkable young man the expression of her spirit. (Kesey, always prone to outrageousness, claimed that the whole novel was "dictated" to him when he was in a drug trance).

K. Kesey's book became the "bible" of the 60s, its characters and the author - the heroes of the youth movement and counterculture. In a brightly painted bus, Kesey with a group of friends who called themselves "Merry Pranksters" traveled around the United States, promoting freedom from any restrictions, was in prison for drug possession, and in the 70s settled down and settled - for the rest of his life - on his ranch . Despite the fact that Kesey wrote about a dozen books ("And sometimes I feel unbearably", 1964; "The Sailor's Song", 1992; "The Last Circle", 1994, etc.), in the history American Literature he entered as the author of one work. The Cuckoo's Nest was to the 1960s what Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye was to the 1950s: it opened people's eyes to what was happening to them.

The action takes place in a psychiatric ward in a Midwestern hospital, and the characters in the book are patients in a psychiatric hospital. It turns out, however, that they are not crazy at all. It's just these people different reasons unable to adapt to society. One of them (Billy Bibbit) is stuttering and painfully shy, the other (Harding) is tormented by feelings of inferiority because of his wife's infidelities, and so on. They are all "rabbits" and cannot stand up for themselves, and this world is "made for wolves," as the department's "chief psycho" Harding explains to the newcomer McMurphy. They ended up in a madhouse voluntarily. Moreover, they do not feign madness at all, but, weird people, they are so inconsistent with the healthy American way of life that society readily gets rid of them.

Upon closer reading, this already acute and unexpected situation turns into a new side, revealing a generalizing, allegorical narrative plan. Residential psychiatric facility, described in the novel, very modern, with easy chairs, with television, radio, with polite staff and self-government of the board of patients - this is a small model of a consumer society, America in general. It is no coincidence that the composition of patients and staff is ethnically and socially diverse. Here is an Indian, and Americans of Swedish, Irish, Scottish origin, Negro orderlies and one of the nurses is Japanese.

Among the patients there are old people and young people, people with a university degree (Harding) and people with no education at all (George the washstand). They all enjoy the same rights: they are well fed, taken for walks and kept clean. Many of them are aware that their free choice"is just an illusion of freedom, that their "self-government" is a fiction, that their life is a semblance of life. But this is a price for comfort and lack of worries. An exorbitant fee, as it turns out in the course of the action, because spiritual murder is committed here daily and hourly. All non-standard , but living people who have gathered in the clinic are subjected to monstrous pressure, constant psychological processing, the purpose of which is supposedly adaptation to the conditions of social life, but in reality - standardization and leveling of the individual.

In order to level a person, you must first humiliate, trample him, to which everything in the department is subordinated - the iron daily routine, the ever-roaring radio, vigilant supervision of patients and group "therapeutic" discussions of the intimate aspects of each patient's life. Finally, this is served by the very threat of using radical means of "resetting the brain" - electric shock and lobotomy. They are applied only to those who cannot be leveled and continue to "break out of the system", such as main character novel by McMurphy. All this is enough to keep people in a "rabbit" state. They become standard and easy to manage. That's what America was like in the early 60s, - the author claims, - take a look, Americans, and freeze in horror!

Salinger showed the first symptoms of the disease. Kesey made the final diagnosis and made a series of prescriptions. These "instructions" are associated with the image of R.P. McMurphy, a strong and reckless guy with a booming voice, red hair and a nose broken in a fight, a womanizer and a joker. He was sent to the clinic for compulsory treatment. He is non-standard, but in a different way than the rest of the patients in the department. He is distinguished by complete emancipation, boundless optimism and "confidence in himself." He fundamentally does not want to obey the standard and does not want to put up with the fact that other people are humiliated and poisoned before his eyes, and he begins to fight for the human right to be a man, not a robot.

The plot of the novel is based on the ups and downs of McMurphy's struggle with Miss Gnusen, the all-powerful head nurse of the department, the embodiment of the system. The outcome of the struggle is tragic: seeing that it will not be possible to defeat McMurphy, he is sent for a lobotomy. The physical death of the hero is perceived as deliverance from the miserable fate of a warning exhibit: this is what will happen to those who start a riot!

The book is written in a tragic farce tone. Incredibly funny in places and creepy in essence, it does not leave a feeling of hopelessness. McMurphy still managed to defend his comrades as living people, to prove to them that a protest is possible. One by one, the "voluntary" patients leave the clinic. The structure of the novel is open. It ends with the daring escape of the most loyal of McMurphy's followers, the "compulsory old-timer" of Bromden's half-blood Indian branch, on behalf of whom the story is being told. The main plot is somewhat complicated digressions- passages-memoirs of Bromden about his Indian childhood and about the past pre-hospital life, as well as passages-dreams and hallucinations; however, they are very organic and do not prevent the novel from being read "in one breath."

However, the novel's relative simplicity is deceptive. This is a postmodern text, and it is literally saturated with evangelical, transcendentalist, Freudian motifs and literary associations, which, with rare exceptions, never come to the surface, but give the book a multidimensionality. So, McMurphy, who knew about his fate and accepted death torment for other people, is clearly associated with the Son of God Jesus Christ (the gospel plan of subtext is palpable in a number of scenes of the novel). The hero's actions are based on Emerson's principle of "confidence in oneself", the most important in transcendental ethics, and the doctrine of "civil disobedience" by Thoreau.

Especially, however, the Freudian background of the novel is clear. So, McMurphy intuitively correctly understands the origins of the psychological sadism of the fifty-year-old spinster Miss Gnusen - this is compensation for the suppressed sexual instinct. True, the hero has not read either Freud or Jung, or, as he says, “is not familiar with the cabin boy Fred,” but the author is well acquainted with them. And, for example, an incomparable, exceptionally lively and funny scene fishing during a boat trip organized by McMurphy for the sick, has an underlying symbolic meaning. While the hero and his girlfriend Candy, his "out of the country" girlfriend, are secluded in a cabin, the rest of the patients are enthusiastically fishing. Fish is a common Freudian symbol of love. (Sexual emancipation was one of the points of the author's program for the improvement of society). The scene of fishing is significant in the gospel plan of the story. Fish is an important christian symbol. As you know, the image of a fish, not a cross, marked the temples of the first Christians.

In a number of literary associations - Shakespeare (the theme of imaginary madness, the image of George the washstand), E. Poe (the idea of ​​the permeability of the boundaries between the norm and pathology), Melville, S. Anderson. Thus, the world of the inhabitants of the lunatic asylum is the situation of Anderson's Winesburg brought to the limit. Kesey's heroes are "grotesque heroes". Moreover, they are grotesque even outwardly: the two-meter giant Chief Bromden, who has been pretending to be deaf and mute for many years, thirty-year-old Billy Bibbit, who looks like a lop-eared boy, Harding, with his too pretty face and nervous hands, which he is shy (a direct association with Anderson's Wing Biddlebam from the novel "Hands") and his manner of "wrapping himself in his own thin shoulders." Grotesque and all other patients of the clinic.

To understand the author's intention, parallels with the American "super novel" "Moby Dick, or the White Whale" by the brilliant romantic writer G. Melville are very important. The signal for such a perception is given from the very first pages of the novel, at first in a comically reduced manner. A whole flock of white whales frolic on the underpants of a newly admitted McMurphy hospital. The replicated image of the legendary Moby Dick is also a sign of the times, a product of modern mass culture. The chain of Melville associations can be traced quite clearly in the novel. Let us note only the key points of their meaning.

So, Miss Vile, with her complete callousness, lack of humanity and unlimited powers, is associated with the monstrous Moby Dick himself, the embodiment of incomprehensible forces beyond the control of man. Not without reason, the incredible whiteness of her uniform, hard from starch, her white face, very bright eyes "without depth" are constantly emphasized. This whiteness is perceived not as purity, but as the absence of color, indifference, cold, deadness. This is the whiteness of Moby Dick, to which Kesey adds another aspect - sterility. Like Moby Dick, Miss Gnoosen embodies something impersonal, albeit more concrete - a militant public order, the idea of ​​a complete leveling of human individuality.

For McMurphy, she is the focus of the world's evil - like the White Whale for Captain Ahab. And the desperate struggle between them is reminiscent of Ahab's fight with Moby Dick: one of them must be destroyed. At the same time, at times, the emphasis shifts, and already the ascetic fanatic Miss Gnusen begins to resemble Ahab, and McMurphy - white whale in its other meaning - spontaneity, naturalness and scale. In this way, the idea of ​​the ambivalence of good and evil enters into the novel.

Another point is very important for understanding the author's intention. The ethnically diverse composition of the department's patients is clearly associated with the multinational crew of the Pequod, Captain Ahab's ship, which, as we recall, acted as a model for the United States at Melville. Melvillian associations, as it were, enlarge the scale of what is happening. In many ways, it is they who make us perceive the novel as a reflection on the fate of the nation and humanity, a warning about the danger that threatens them.

K. Kesey's book organically fit into the widely developed in the 1960s, along with other numerous movements of this turbulent decade, the movement for "joining the roots." So criticism marked the then surge of general American interest in everything "Indian", caused by the desire to support Native Americans in the struggle for their civil rights. In literature, this movement manifested itself in increased attention to the "Indian theme": to the ancient mythopoetic work of native Americans and to contemporary folklore their reservations, to their inner world.

Various aspects of the "Indian theme" were developed in the prose of John Barth and Thomas Berger ("Little big man", 1964), Truman Capote ("In Cold Blood", 1965) and a number of other writers, in the poetry of Robert Penn Warren, Denise Levertov and many others. In K. Kesey's novel "Over the Cuckoo's Nest" this topic appeared in an unusual and sharp perspective , the image of the Native American was especially impressive.

Kesey's book, like a kind of concentrating mirror, not only reflected and sharpened the problem of Native Americans, but also showed it as the focus of all the pressing problems of America, which entered the second half of the 20th century. In "Cuckoo's Nest" this problem in all its modern complexity, it literally declares itself: the story is told from the perspective of the half-breed Indian "chief" Bromden, a shell-shocked veteran of the Second World War, a longtime patient of the psychiatric department. The leader - the hero-narrator and interpreter of all events - appears here as a bright and complex personality.

The author deeply and subtly explores the "Indian" features of his mental make-up. Along with the difficult ethnic and military experience in Bromden, the great-memory of his ancestors lives, he acts as a carrier folklore tradition Native Americans, their mythopoetic thinking, their flexible and wise perception of the world. As it turns out, the blood of the leaders really flows in Bromden. His father "was a full-blooded Colombian Indian - chief - hard and shiny as a gun butt." Although the hero is only half Indian, but brought up in an environment of native Americans, he himself feels like one. And his point of view is the point of view of an Indian.

The mythopoetic thinking of Native Americans recognizes the reality of the existence of an additional, spiritual dimension, the existence of other worlds along with the objective and material world. The boundaries of the latter seem to this thinking to be permeable, which opens up the possibility of traveling to "other worlds".

Such travels, in fact, are Bromden's memories of his childhood and youth, which he experiences as a reality. The leader resorts to them when he becomes unbearable to endure hospital days. The episode of Bromden's "journey" to the picture hanging in the department illustrates this idea of ​​Indian mythopoetics surprisingly accurately.

Bromden's dreams are also a reality, this is a terrible "other world" where he visits against his will. It is no coincidence that the hero dreams of a nightmare with bodies hung on hooks and Blastik dismembered into pieces on the very night when Blastik dies. The spiritual world (dream, memory, the true essence of people) is the same reality for him as the material world, because he is an Indian. He was locked up in a "psychiatric hospital" and is being treated, precisely because he does not separate reality from his "hallucinations". It turns out that he is being treated for being an Indian, being treated for the thousand-year-old spiritual culture of his ancient people wanting to fit it into the standard of modern American civilization.

Of course, Bromden's spiritual harmony is broken, not without reason he "shies away from his own shadow" and feels "small". Surprisingly, however, it is not. On the contrary, it is surprising that in the sterile hospital hell, after 200 sessions of electric shock, he retained his poetic Indian worldview, his living soul.

By creating a living, authentic and vivid image Chief Bromden, forcing the reader to get used to his complex inner world, Kesey thereby, as it were, released the Indian from captivity literary tradition and philistine stereotypes - into living, not book life.

I decided to pick up this book as a continuation of my acquaintance with the generation of beatniks, which was thoroughly sensational in the middle of the 20th century. And my acquaintance with him followed after reading “On the Road” by Jack Kerouac (we will talk about it separately), which, admittedly, turned out to be less positive than I expected. Filled with a somewhat dubious mood about the work of this generation, I took up the book Over the Cuckoo's Nest. But first you need to make a small digression.

I rarely watch a movie based on a book before I read it. In my opinion, a book is always better for a first acquaintance, because directors and screenwriters often like to neglect the emotional or psychological component. literary work for the sake of a demanding viewer and sometimes they clean it very important points. It so happened that I saw the film "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" earlier. But by the time I read the book, I had already forgotten the plot completely, so it read like something new. Although, in the case of this work, I am ready to believe that many people read after watching the movie. Now the movie itself is next in line!

So, having some bitter experience in the literature of the beat generation, I was preparing for the worst. And I was not at all satisfied with the numerous rave reviews, so I initially prepared myself for the fact that in Kesey's book I would meet exactly the same style, manner of presentation and problematics that appear in Kerouac. Actually, with the book "Over the Cuckoo's Nest" I was going to finish my acquaintance with this period in world literature. Going to read! Now I'm probably not so categorical.

Nevertheless, I am not ready to consider Ken Kesey's work a world masterpiece. It's an undeniably great book and definitely worth a read, and it did somewhat lessen my skepticism towards the beatniks overall. Thanks to her, I will certainly return to this topic at least once more. But all the same, some line of inferiority can be traced in the book, so we will try to dwell on some points in detail.

As I have already noticed, my expectations before reading were quite skeptical. This mood was also greatly aggravated as soon as I read 100-150 pages. The beginning of the narrative is characterized by a certain chaos, fragmentation of events and the entire narrative. I had to literally “glue” everything I read in order to build a coherent picture, and at first I didn’t succeed. To be honest, if not for the principle that I almost always follow, that you should not leave a book unfinished, I would have abandoned it. Having overpowered myself, I continued reading, and I can admit that I really liked the work, I even caught myself thinking that I sincerely empathize with the characters, at times I even felt myself directly in the thick of things. In this regard, perhaps, the ability of the writer to move the reader into his world deserves special attention, thereby creating a real effect of presence. Personally, I was really struck by the moments describing the reflections of the narrator Bromden, one of the patients of the hospital. One gets the impression that we were able to move straight into the consciousness of this person, and in this consciousness there is nothing connected, no logical chains, although sometimes quite adequate and sober thinking is inherent in it. Thus, Kesey skillfully conveys on paper the state of mind and shock of the patient, and at some certain moment we begin to catch the train of thought of a mentally ill person, we begin to connect fragments of phrases, perhaps even manage to comprehend those deviations from everything normal that is characteristic of a healthy person. All in all, Ken Kesey makes me believe that the narrator is a truly sick person and not just another actor trying to put on a mask of insanity.

I can assume that many who have read this novel will not be indifferent to the character in the face of McMurphy. I am inclined to believe that the reason for this empathy lies not in his outstanding human qualities but in a sad fate. For myself, I could not find evidence that the motor of all the actions and actions of McMurphy was selflessness and philanthropy. On the contrary, in every misdeed, distinct notes of greed, greed, and the achievement of benefits bypassing the emotional state of another person are visible. We see this clearly in those moments when McMurphy incited other patients to rebel just in order to get permission to watch the match, which, frankly, was of interest only to McMurphy. In the same way, he did not fail to take advantage of the "tightness" of the Indian Bromden, forcing him to perform various tasks in exchange for assistance in a "recovery", which, as expected, did not follow. If we analyze his behavior solely on the basis of the available facts, it would be extremely difficult for me personally to call his type endearing, while from an emotional point of view this happens to most readers. In my understanding of the world, such a person is not worthy of empathy, so you should not identify the sad outcome with the human factor.

I can say with confidence that Ken Kesey did an excellent job of creating the characters in his novel, endowing each of them with their own unique “crazy qualities”. He succeeded in creating brilliant realistic picture asylums for the mentally ill, and one should assume that those who are not familiar with such realities could quite tangibly imagine life and environment that situation. But there is one point that I for myself could not classify as unambiguous. I could not catch the main message of the author! Should we consider as such the cruel, and at times even terrible, treatment of patients by doctors during the formation of the foundations of psychiatric treatment and the development of a scientific base? I doubt. After all, you must admit, it is difficult to argue that the medical staff at the head of the older sister behaved inappropriately towards patients in general, and McMurphy in particular. All the disagreements and civil strife between patients and doctors that took place in the work were by no means based on malicious neglect moral standards, and the older sister, in my opinion, acted within the permissible, not indulging all the whims of the patient / s, thereby forbidding certain liberties. In this regard, for me it was a great surprise that incident, which, in fact, crowned the work. It's just that in the course of the text, such an ending did not seem possible to me at all, for me personally it seems illogical. For me, tragedy seems to be a series of facts during which I get used to the character, empathize with him morally, and to some extent prepare for such a result. Kesey did it very abruptly, instantly. Perhaps this is a feature of the author or the style of narration, but it is somewhat alien to me. It is clear that everyone can have their own views on this issue, and you have full right agree or not.

Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Kesey has not become a landmark book for me and probably never will be. But still inside there is some inexplicable and pleasant feeling after reading. In my opinion, this is a sure sign of quality for a literary work, and even if the book does not take the place of my beloved in my heart, it will definitely find a worthy place there.

The title of the book, as well as its epigraph, were the last two lines of the children's rhyme: "...one flew east, one flew west. One flew over the cuckoo"s nest."

The action takes place in a psychiatric hospital in Salem (Oregon). The story is told from the perspective of the narrator Chief Bromden, one of the patients. One of the main characters is the free-spirited patient Randle Patrick McMurphy, who is transferred to a psychiatric hospital from prison. It is assumed that he feigned a mental breakdown just to avoid hard labor. Other patients are presented in the novel, perhaps not as mentally ill, but as normal people rejected by a sick society. "- What a dull team, damn it. You guys don't seem so crazy." He tries to stir them up like an auctioneer throws jokes to stir up the public before the start of the auction. - Who here calls himself the most crazy? head psycho?", "Go to hell, Harding, that's not what I'm talking about. Not that crazy. I mean... Damn, I'm surprised you're all normal. If you ask me, you're as good as any streets...".

McMurphy is confronted by an older sister - an elderly woman who works in a hospital department "- I don’t need this nonsense about a gentle mother, brother. She may be a mother, but she is big, like a bulldozer, and all iron, like a hammer. And with this number with a good old mother, she deceived me today, when I came, for three minutes, no more. jump."

The elder sister diligently consolidates her power over the patients and staff of the department. The rebel and individualist McMurphy begins to destroy the order arranged by her and has a significant impact on other patients, teaching them to enjoy life and even freeing them from chronic complexes. This goes as far as violating all sorts of hospital rules, up to and including night party in a department with heavy drinking and the participation of prostitutes.

Unable to keep the situation under control, the older sister infuriates McMurphy, and, taking the opportunity, sends him to the lobotomy. McMurphy's life is interrupted, but the other patients become bolder, more confident and free from the power of their older sister.

Meaning of the novel's title

The title of the novel is taken from the children's epigraph song: "Someone flew to the west, someone flew to the east, and someone flew over the cuckoo's nest" ( literal translation from the original: "... one flew east, one flew west. One flew over the cuckoo "s nest"). In the free interpretation of the literary translator Viktor Petrovich Golyshev, K. Kesey's work turned out to be more rhythmic and, in addition, rhyming, as in the original, a counting rhyme: "Who is from home, who is in the house, who is over the cuckoo's nest. " But, unfortunately, the motif of the geographical openness of the space open to different sides Sveta. (http://bluebird-hd.org/details.php?id=151&page=0).

Firstly, the cuckoo's nest is like a fern flower - a man-made phenomenon. Paradox. It turns out that psychiatric hospitals are something that should not be. But, contrary to the laws of nature and human logic, they exist.

Secondly, in American slang, "cuckoo's nest" is a lunatic asylum. And flight towards freedom is like flying over a cuckoo's nest.

Thus, we understand that Kesey uses a metaphor in the title of the work.

But, in addition, according to the previously mentioned film critic Sergei Kudryavtsev, the name has a different meaning. "A cuckoo's nest is a nest without chicks. She leaves them to fend for themselves - let them climb out on their own. Paradoxically, this is quite reminiscent of the typical American principle: "create yourself." So America is an empty cuckoo's nest, and her own children turn out to be homeless stepchildren endlessly wandering along the roads. In this respect, "Someone flew over the cuckoo's nest" is exactly in the context of American prose of the late 60s - early 70s. But at the same time it is perceived as a universal parable, tells about the attitude of the individual to the problem of freedom, whether it is only one's own or socially significant.

2) our other suggestion is that the author was referring to a new patient, R.P. McMurphy. This character, indeed, seemed to have flown through the walls of the hospital and left it. The action in the book also begins only with the appearance of the hero, and ends with his death, after which it remains only to bring the reader to the logical conclusion of the story. Do not forget that McMurphy, unlike the rest of the characters in the novel, was a man "outside", able to impartially assess the situation in the hospital.