"Cliff Notes - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

McMurphy is acting as if he were the greatest sailor of all time. While he jokes with the Acutes, the Chronics look at the Chief with envy that he is healthy enough to join the trip and they are not. McMurphy still needs to book another passenger, but it seems that the Nurse has been so successful in convincing the patients of the trip's dangers he won't be able to find anyone. Then George Sorenson, the obsessively clean man who wouldn't even shake McMurphy's hand when he arrived, walks up and gives McMurphy pointers on catching fish; it turns out that George was a commercial fisherman for 25 years. McMurphy grabs at this chance to get an expert passenger. He needs someone like George, he pleads, admitting that he is far from the expert sailor he's been claiming to be. When George balks, too afraid of germs to join the trip, McMurphy tries to appeal to the fisherman's vanity, implying that his real fear is not of germs but of the stories the Nurse has spread about the dangerous ocean. Now George has his own small rebellion: he'll show the Nurse and everyone else that he is not frightened of the sea. He doesn't have $10, but McMurphy lets him join the trip for $5. (Here, as with his offer to the Chief, we see that McMurphy remains enough of a con artist that his generosity is never completely pure. This weakness for the quick buck will be used against him later.)

Only one of the prostitutes shows up, and she is younger, prettier, and more innocent-looking than anyone had expected. Indeed, Candy Starr becomes one of the few entirely sympathetic women characters in the book. Her appearance causes a stir among patients and staff; to the Chief, it's as if the hospital machinery falls apart at the sight of her. The men's stares make Candy nervous, but Billy Bibbit breaks the ice with a wolf whistle, the sort of appreciation she is used to.

Nurse Ratched makes a last attempt to spoil the day by saying that because McMurphy has only one car, half the patients will have to stay behind. Perhaps the entire trip may have to be cancelled. When McMurphy protests that he'll lose money, the Nurse maneuvers him into revealing that he hopes to make a small profit on the expedition. She wants the other patients to see him as a dishonest trickster. "As I think about it now, you've had more than your share of victories," she says--and she is not talking just about money.

But Candy's beauty saves the day, making the doctor susceptible to McMurphy's cajoling to join the trip and take a hospital car. The group leaves. Ellis, who stands in his usual, crucified position against the wall, says farewell using Christ's words to Peter--be a fisher of men. Billy, acting the way McMurphy himself might, turns the farewell into a risque joke about Candy. Like the Chief, he's gaining sexual self-confidence.

Outside! For the first time in the book the Chief has escaped beyond the walls of the hospital. You'll notice that even his descriptions are clearer now--when he comments that "It looked at first like the leaves were hitting the fence and turning into birds and flying away," his use of the words "at first," and "like" turn what could be one of his hallucinations into a rational simile.

But the patients are unsettled by their freedom. They've exposed themselves to the world the Nurse has warned them repeatedly they can't survive. Even Dr. Spivey is nervous. When the two cars pull up to a gas station, the attendant isn't fooled by the doctor's feeble lie that his passengers are not hospital patients but a work crew, and he is ready to cheat them. McMurphy informs the attendant that the passengers are indeed mental patients, and especially dangerous ones at that. The attendant, frightened, backs down, and the other patients follow McMurphy's example. "He'd shown us what a little bravado and courage could accomplish, and we thought he'd taught us how to use it."

The lesson hasn't fully sunk in yet; the patients are far from being completely healed. No one will laugh, the Chief says, and McMurphy "knew you can't really be strong until you can see a funny side to things." But the Chief wonders if McMurphy is able to see the damage that has been done to the patients, the reasons why they are unable to laugh: if McMurphy can in fact see the Combine.

NOTE: THE COMBINE Here we see evidence that the Combine is busy at work on the outside as well as inside the hospital. The wild West that was the Chief's home has been defiled by "five thousand houses punched out identical by a machine"; commuter trains deposit businessmen in "mirrored suits and machined hats, laying them like a hatch of identical insects." (One of those businessmen could well be the lobotomized Mr. Taber.) There is no room for anyone different; the different will only suffer, like the one kid the Chief imagines playing crack the whip, always at the end of the line, always the one to fly off and get hurt. This pattern will repeat itself for the rest of the kid's life, as he becomes someone like Harding, or Billy, or the Chief himself.

McMurphy and his 12 followers (note that their number is the same as the number of Christ's disciples: an early likening of McMurphy to Christ) reach the ocean. But the captain and crew of the boat McMurphy has chartered give them trouble: McMurphy can't sail without papers authorizing the trip, the captain announces; the crew makes dirty comments about Candy. Brave with each other in the car, the Chief and the rest of the patients are again afraid when presented with a real threat, and their fear shames them.

But McMurphy fools everyone, taking the patients out on the boat without permission or captain or crew. Out on the ocean, as far from the hospital and Nurse Ratched as they can be, the patients feel a sense of release. McMurphy gives Billy a chance to be alone with Candy, and when Billy refuses, goes below deck with the girl himself. Meanwhile, the other patients are learning to fish under the instruction of George Sorenson, the ex-fishing boat captain who has taken the helm just as he did in the old days. A braver captain than those of the other sportsfishing boats, George doesn't hug the shore but heads out into the open ocean.

The patients are excited. Billy wins the pool for catching the first fish, though it's clear that despite his victory, he'd rather be with Candy. George steers the boat into a school of salmon, the fish begin to bite, and the boat goes wild. No one knows what to do; even Dr. Spivey is calling on McMurphy for help. But McMurphy only laughs. The patients must learn to solve this crisis--and by implication, all the crises of their lives--for themselves, and they do. Harding helps the Chief land his fish.

Candy, who has lost her T-shirt during her time below deck with McMurphy, takes a pole. Billy helps her, at last getting his chance to be near the lovely girl. In the chaos of shouts, flopping salmon, bending fishing poles, George stalls the boat. But McMurphy continues to laugh, because, the Chief says, "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. He knows there's a painful side... but he won't let the pain blot out the humor no more'n he'll let the humor blot out the pain."

This is the secret to sanity, to survival. This is the lesson McMurphy has been teaching throughout the book. And now, at last, the patients have learned it, because they, too, are laughing. The Chief has gone them one step further--his description of his feelings reminds us of his description of McMurphy's voice at the start of the book. He's like a bird, flying free above the world.

The doctor, who in his way is as much a victim of Nurse Ratched as are his patients, enjoys his moment of triumph as he lands an enormous salmon. The boat struggles through the high waves the Nurse has warned about, but safely, with Billy getting a chance to be Candy's hero by giving up his life jacket to her. During the rough ride into the harbor, George stands at the helm, unmoving as the mast. He's regained something of his old strength on the trip.

At the dock, the Combine--in the forms of the captain and the local police--are ready to attack, but the doctor (now braver and cagier himself) warns that he will get the captain in trouble over the shortage of life jackets. McMurphy and the captain engage in a brief scuffle, then make peace over beers. The crew that had been rude when the patients left is polite now that they have proved themselves on the ocean, and is full of admiration for George's skill as a sailor. Even George's obsession with cleanliness for once makes humorous sense: to a suggestion that he enter politics he answers he won't because it's "too dirty."

They return to the hospital late. Billy and Candy arrange a date for two in the morning the next Saturday. The patients enter the ward as heroes, but there's an ominous note when one of those who remained points out how tired McMurphy seems. Harding jokingly claims that McMurphy tired himself out making love, but the Chief suspects something more serious is wrong. He remembers the drive back from the ocean.

They drove through the town where McMurphy spent his youth. His old house is run-down now, and his parents are dead. "A good home," he says nostalgically. Then, perhaps a little unbelievably, he spots a rag caught in a tree: put there, he says, by the first girl he made love to, when he was only ten years old.

NOTE: THE USE OF RHYME You should note that the description of this girl, and all of this description of McMurphy's return to his hometown, is written in rhyme: "The first girl ever drug me to bed / Wore that very same dress. / I was about ten and she was probably less / And at the time a lay seemed like such a big deal / I asked her if didn't she think, feel / We ought to announce it some way? / Like say, tell our folks, 'Mom / Judy and me got engaged today.'" The rhyme emphasizes the poetry of McMurphy's memories, memories which are to him as precious as the Chief's recollections of his Indian village--and as distant from the grim world of the hospital to which he must now return.

The little girl teaches McMurphy not just about sex, but about the occasional rightness of violating the rules: she knows they don't have to get married just because they've made love. McMurphy seems full of his usual bravado as he recalls her. But the tail lights from a passing car expose his face, and the Chief sees that McMurphy is in fact very weary. His rough life has brought him to a prison from which there may be no escape. Yet it's a measure of his generosity that despite his weariness, he continues to play the part the patients have come to expect him to play: McMurphy the rogue, the fighter for a freedom that could, perhaps, be theirs.

^^^^^^^^^^ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST: PART IV

Part IV consists of four scenes.

^^^^^^^^^^ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST: SCENE 1

We've seen Nurse Ratched plotting against McMurphy; now she makes her first move, trying to undermine the patients' respect for him. Why did McMurphy "spend so much time and energy organizing fishing trips to the coast and arranging Bingo parties and coaching basketball teams? What pushed him to keep up a full head of steam when everybody else on the ward had always been content to drift along playing pinochle and reading last year's magazines?" The Nurse's insinuations are not impossible ones. In fact, she is taking a view that almost all of us have taken in our more cynical moments. Is there such a thing as true generosity? Aren't most people watching out for themselves most of the time? Why should McMurphy be any different?

What's more, McMurphy has left himself vulnerable to her attack. For the fact is he isn't a saint. He's a gambler who likes to win. As a result, the patients are not unwilling to believe the Nurse's rumors. They, too, find it hard to believe that anyone would perform so many acts of kindness without expecting something for himself.

At the group meeting, McMurphy is at first able to fight back, but when he leaves to take a phone call (presumably from Candy), Nurse Ratched can resume her attack without opposition. She's sly about this, as she always is, leading the patients until they say the things about McMurphy she wants them to say: that because McMurphy is not perfect, he must be completely bad, a con artist whose sole reason for being in the hospital is to separate the patients from their money. Billy tries to defend the man who arranged his date with Candy and who has spent hours teaching him to dance, but the Nurse is too clever for him: she insists that she is "not criticizing this activity as such." It's enough that she has planted doubts about McMurphy in everyone's minds. And she drops her attack before McMurphy returns from the phone, so he will remain ignorant of the damage she has done him.