Normal is Stifling!!!. Review on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey

To conform is societies greatest desire. Anyone who doesn't is branded different, difficult, loony and MADE to conform, become 'Normal'. But nature never conforms, she always chooses her own path, just like no two snowflakes are alike.

Then why do so many humans want to be alike?? To be part of the 'IN' crowd. It doesn't make any sense, but it does create ease of administration. Ken Kasey's 'One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest', first published in 1962, goes on to examine this concept in a superbly crafted original book, written at the height of 'Flower Power'. It has also been made into a blockbuster movie by Milos Foreman, starring Jack Nicholson..

The story begins in a Mental Institution, ruled by the 'Big Nurse' on behalf of the all-powerful 'Combine'. Shadowy but ever present, the Combine could just as easily be the Mafia, a Government, basically the Establishment.

Narrated by 'Chief Bromden', a 7 foot giant half American-Indian, whom the authorities believe is deaf & dumb (he doesn't disabuse them either), the story begins with a graphic description of a mental asylum, which the big nurse runs, where everything & everyone is on a schedule. Where Sodomy (by the ward-boys), Shock Treatments and Seclusion are de rigeur. Where the common room plays deafening music (the same cassette daily, over and over again...Will drive anyone mad), where patients are separated as Acutes (younger patients who may still recover) & Chronics (not to recover, but to prevent them from walking around, giving the Combine a bad name)

The book moves into all the sickening habits that become a part of daily life, like nobody ever laughs, and how everyone spies on each other, entering info abt each other into a big log book - of 'Therapeutic' interest to the whole ward is how the big nurse justifies it.

Enter the revolutionary (No not Mahatma Gandhi), just R.P.McMurphy (Jack N.). His entry is marked with the first real laugh ever heard in the common room and he goes on to take the entire Combine by the horns and rattle them real bad. A gambling, drinking, hard-talking convict who pleads madness, McMurphy is just what the doc ordered for the group of snivelling, yellow bellied loony's. He turns the rules around, behaves irreverently with all and sundry and generally creates mayhem. He brings the well-oiled m/c of the combine to a grinding, shrieking halt.

Branded a Manipulator (huh), the rest of the book is devoted to the classical struggle for supremacy. The Big Nurse and the Combine being the establishment and the Loony Bins under the leadership of McMurphy unite for some hilarious, some not-so-hilarious and some amazingly sensitive flash-points, each one delicately played out to the max by the author and narrated by the Big Chief.

Book One is an inspiring tribute to the rabble-rouser, who just by being himself, creates a devoted fan-following and helps inject some life into the death-like asylum.

Book Two describes how McMurphy continues to dominate over the big nurse, but it slowly begins to dawn on the reader that the story is rapidly moving towards a major collision course.

You see.... the big nurse has one last 'ACE' up her sleeve.

Book Three & Four

SHE has to recommend McMurphy's release, the fight could go on for as long as she wanted, till he makes a mistake, or gives out. Also how she plays on the psyche of the other patients to corner Murphy, how man cannot believe in the good in one another. Book Three & Four deals with these terrible truths. Abruptly McMurphy does a volte face and tries to be a good boy. But just as a dogs tail can never be straightened....The book's climax though disturbing makes you realise there was no other way for the book to end, and you stand with the Big Chief as he walks away and you pray...

Pray for this world that insists on enforcing external discipline on everyone. Pray that this relentless drive towards normalcy doesn't eventually create a world full of 'MAD' people.

Walking against the system is hard, especially if you have only your own experience to guide you. But if the step is never taken, for fear of the beyond, then you will never move from the starting line....

This book is a tribute to the original thinkers of our age, who dared to dream and fought to achieve their dreams....

Read it and open your eyes...

Cheers