One flew over the Cucko's nest

[Ali]

So do to the fact that I am an Idiot who can't differentiate between "7" and "8" , and the fact that i don't know the Shatti very well, I missed today's meeting .
but had the pleasure to meet two of the members Mutasm & Sami.
now you all know each other and am a complete stranger :-/
anyway i just wanted to point out a few points about the book here since i didn't get to the meeting, how much do you think of the book is real since the Writer did work in mental asylum ?
2- I thought that nurse represented a social class or a group of people that didn't deserve to lead (the doctors should be leading the place not the nurse who is controlling them), and doesn't use violence (the nurse rarely use harsh punishments) , but she controls everyone through rewards and threats! I think the writer does believe in a conspiracy theory (it shows in the narrator "the Chief"). I googled and apparently allot of people think that too. what do you guys think?

and finally sorry again , that you missed out the chance to meet the wonderful being that is "I".

[Fatma]

Hey Ali - Don't worry about not making it to this meeting, you were not the only one who couldn't make it. There's always next time.

Thanks for creating this discussion. I probably should have done this, a while ago!

I guess it's hard for me to gauge how much of the book is real, but from what I know about Ken Kesey, with his drug expirementation and participation in the study of hallucinogenic drugs - I doubt any of it is real!

I kept on encouraging some of the members to get the edition that I got (Penguin Modern Classics edition) because this one had some of Ken Kesey's own illustrations (he was an illustrator too, apparently, which came as a pleasant surprise to me) of the characters in the book. I loved this because it helped me to visualize the characters in the way that Kesey, through the lens of Chief Bromden, viewed the characters. They were fantastical, grotesque and beautiful sketches of all of the characters. Something about those drawings was very touching because I feel like he was basing them on real people. It's clear from his writer that he takes a sympathetic and even loving view of the patients in the ward, even the most exasperating ones. This is as opposed to the staff members, whom he distrusts or, in some cases, hates. I think that kind of intense position can't really be fabricated and must have borrowed quite a bit from his real life experiences.

About Nurse Ratched, I do agree with the general opinion. I think there's no question that this book is entirely a metaphor: the nurse and her minions represents 'modern society'; the mental institution's cold, clinical building represents the ruthless structure of the system that forces blandness, and leaves no room for anything unique or out of the ordinary, and the patients represent those people who just do not quite fit in for whatever reason. It's almost childlike in its simplicity, kind of like Animal Farm (George Orwell) but it's also that simplicity that makes it so striking, and at the same time easy to swallow.

[Ali]

Fatma wrote: "Hey Ali - Don't worry about not making it to this meeting, you were not the only one who couldn't make it. There's always next time.

Thanks for creating this discussion. I probably should have do..."
Interesting about the illustration thingy, which made me remember, that today i brought a bunch of books of mine i finished reading and i wanted to give it to you guys, some are really good, and i wanted to make like a lil tradition were we exchange used books.

and if the book is about the "system" does it also represent how people who rebel against it might end ?
McMurphy's fate?
what you just said kinda remind me of this poem.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjfMQ3...

[Mohammed]

Since, I am either unable or unwilling to attend these meetings (inside joke - sorry!) this is quite a good idea since I have a few thoughts about it.

It's a good/great book, but I didn't enjoy reading it. I know this would become better, and rightfully deserves a second reading some time in the future.

This book does some things really well and others not as much.

I wasn't sold on Bromden's motivation not to speak, or didn't understand it, and that stood out quite a lot to me in the beginning and lingered as I thought that it would be part of some great revelation that didn't manifest.

Reading it in light of the 'institutional distrust' that the guys above me touched upon, it could be interpreted as being the kind of complacency, acceptance of fate, and indifference of modern life, and if so, I think could have been a failure on Kesey's part to make Bromden more representative of the original inspiration -the observer/scoffer- that comes from modern society, who isn't vocal, but isn't silent. His thought stream wasn't enough for that end.

That, I think, strongly ties into the better aspects of the book. Namely, the accurate arrangement of the characters. If indeed the book was social commentary about modern life (circa 1970s), then everybody was adequately represented. To me, it solidifies the idea and the reality of the cyclical rise and fall of societies as being formulaic and that there are preset roles for everybody, and already known tendencies that people part of a long term congregation will eventually intuitively gravitate towards. I don't know of any other work that does that so convincingly. His understanding of this aspect is unparalleled.

Everything else just worked adequately or better. It was funny, but not hilarious (thank god). The writing and imagery perfectly portrayed how little there was to describe, how grey, routinish and bland everything was (or needed to be to draw attention to the plot). The characters were interesting but not as whimsical as I was hoping a story about a mental institution would be, but as I said earlier, genius in their 'fitting of the moulds'. The stand out here for me is the PR guy, who I thought perfectly portrayed distracters/marketers/lipstick-on-a-pig-ers of everything that needs to be challenged in society.

Not much else to say really. Illustrations would have been cool to look at, though. Ill post if I come up with anything else.

[Fatma]

I know exactly what you mean about Bromden. I was also expecting to see some striking revelation, and when it didn't come, I started to form some other opinions.

Basically my theory is that Bromden is autistic on top of being a paranoid schizophrenic (I don't know if that is medically possible, but this is a fiction so ill assume it is!). The thing that brought me to this point was a culmination of several traits of his: we know that he is proficient with electronic engineering in some way. Indeed he sees the entire institution as a large 'combine', nurse Ratched sitting behind her glass partition and controlling everything with secret wires, dials and panels. This is a very dehumanizing thing to do and fits in with the severe autistic persons inability to make any meaningful connection to other people.

The other thing is of course his lack of speech. We know he can hear, because he is our fly on the wall of the institution. But he claims to be able to speak and chooses not to for whatever reason. I want to believe that the reason he's not speaking (except for those rare occasions when he opens up to McMurphy) is because he's autistic and actually isn't able to speak because it's a symptom of his condition.

This ties into that memory he recounts of being a child, with the two government reps come over to his tribe's land to appraise the area. He claims to have spoken up to their casually dismissive attitude in order to shock them with his learned English, but no matter how much he speaks, they go on as if he's not there. That makes me think that in his head he believes he's speaking, but in reality he's not. The memory evokes a strong sense of him beings locked up inside himself, which is exactly the way I imagine an autistic mind sometimes, although it may be impossible to tell completely.

This might be total nonsense, I'm just thinking out loud. But this is sort of the idea that I created about Bromden in order to explain the way he is.