One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Ken Kesey
Author
Chief Bromden
Bromden is the narrator of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and is himself a patient in the mental hospital. He has been there longer than any other patient and suffers from paranoia and hallucinations. While there he documents the evolving patients and world around him, while regaining a sense of himself as an individual.
Randle McMurphy
Randle is a big red-headed gambler and backroom boxer that was sentenced to 6 months in prison, but instead was sent to the hospital when he was found to be a psychopath. He's the protagonist in the novel and challenges the institution while becoming the victimized patients hero.
Nurse Ratched
As the antagonist in the novel, the former army nurse is the head of the mental institution. She selectively chooses her staff based on their submissiveness and slowly wears down her patients self-esteem with her psychoactive manipulation.
Plot Teaser
conflict
"While McMurphy laughs. Rocking farther and farther backward against the cabin top, spreading his laugh out across the water—laughing at the girl, the guys, at George, at me sucking my bleeding thumb, at the captain back at the pier and the bicycle rider and the service-station guys and the five thousand houses and the Big Nurse and all of it. Because he knows you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy."
Who would like this book?
Did I like this book?
Citations
Ken:http://www.knucklepit.com/_tken%20kesey3.jpg
Bromden:http://www.flickr.com/photos/portlandcenterstage/5425548251/
McMurphy1:http://www.flickr.com/photos/portlandcenterstage/5425548271/sizes/o/in/photostream/
Ratched:http://www.flickr.com/photos/drurydrama/6367064831/sizes/o/in/photostream/
McMurphy2:http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Zuoo_E5F-sw/UIX1K-G-eMI/AAAAAAAABFg/vO3ddyqv_sc/s1600/jack-nicholson.jpg
Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. New York: Signet Fiction, 1962.
Print.
http://www.ohs.org/the-oregon-history-project/biographies/Ken-Kesey.cfm