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

As with so many of the patients, Harding's problem is in large part sexual: ashamed of his effeminacy (symbolized by his graceful, uncontrollable hands), he is terrified of his wife and her accusations of homosexuality and weakness.

Harding's transformation over the course of the book is almost as striking as the Chief's. Thanks to McMurphy, he comes to realize that effeminacy is not his real problem: the real problem is his fear of it. Following McMurphy's example he is able to overcome his fear, to add courage to his intelligence. The healed Harding is in his way nearly as strong a man as the Chief. He sees the necessity of McMurphy's escape and makes plans for it, and when, unhappily, the escape fails and McMurphy is lobotomized, Harding is able to take on McMurphy's role as card sharp, jokester, and constant irritant to Nurse Ratched. He comes to deserve the title that he couldn't win at the book's start, but which McMurphy bestows on him at the end: Bull Goose Looney. And he is able to leave the hospital in the dignified way he wanted to leave it, met by his wife, ready to start a new life on the outside.

^^^^^^^^^^ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST: BILLY BIBBIT

Perhaps the saddest of all Nurse Ratched's victim in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is Billy Bibbit, for he comes so close to not being her victim at all. Sensitive, intelligent, he begins the novel seeming to everyone a mere boy, though in fact he's more than 30 years old.

The most obvious symptom of the illness that has placed Billy in the hospital is his stutter, which, like the Chief's fog and Harding's fluttering hands, grows worse when he is under stress. The stutter forced him out of college and lost him the girl he wanted to marry; interestingly, Billy shares this speech defect, along with an innocence of spirit and a final doom, with another famous Billy of American literature, the title character of Melville's Billy Budd--the second obvious reference to Melville in the novel. (The first of course is McMurphy's whale-decorated shorts.)

The stutter, however, is a symptom of a more serious disease: Billy's inability to grow from a boy into a man. Manhood is defined in this book largely in sexual terms, and the fact that Billy has not lost his virginity though he is past 30 shows that he hasn't taken command of his life in other ways as well. As he admits, he lacks guts. The reason? He has been dominated by a mother who will not let him grow up (perhaps, it is hinted, because his growing up would be a sign of her own growing old). Definitely a member of Harding's matriarchy, Mrs. Bibbit has pushed Billy into the hospital; her good friend Nurse Ratched does her best to keep him there.

Just as Billy's plight is defined sexually, so is his recovery. At first he is embarrassed by McMurphy's lewd jokes; soon he is flirting with the nurses and making jokes himself. When McMurphy's prostitute friend, Candy Starr, visits the ward, Billy alone knows how to make her feel at ease with the sort of attention she's used to: a wolf whistle. And on the fishing trip it's obvious Billy is more interested in Candy than he is in salmon.

The attempt to achieve a final cure for Billy brings us to the climax of the novel, as McMurphy arranges for him to lose his virginity to Candy. This arrangement ends disastrously. After enjoying a successful night together, Billy and the prostitute are discovered. For a few minutes, McMurphy's cure seems to have worked. Billy grins fearlessly at Nurse Ratched and wishes her a good morning without stuttering. But in seconds her anger reduces him to a weak "gutless" child again, tongue-tied, begging for her mercy, blaming the situation on everyone but himself. He can't stand this retreat back to the boy he was before; he commits suicide, as he had twice before threatened to do. His death sends McMurphy into his final, fatal battle with the Nurse.


^^^^^^^^^^ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST: SETTING

The hospital, Dr. Spivey says, "is a little world Inside that is a made-to-scale prototype of the big world Outside." The literary term for such a setting is a microcosm (from the Greek for small universe). Most of the action in Cuckoo's Nest takes place in a world that is indeed limited and specific--one ward of one mental hospital in Oregon. But Kesey intends that limited world to serve as a representative of a much larger one.

Mental hospitals have a long and not particularly inspiring history in Europe and America. The first, such as Bedlam in London, became symbols of chaos and cruelty. While waves of reform in the 19th and 20th century improved life for patients somewhat (as the public relations man insists) we see that, at least in Nurse Ratched's ward, abuse both physical and psychological is still rampant.

However, as grim as his descriptions of the hospital are, Kesey is not simply writing a book that criticizes mental health facilities. For we realize that the outside world is not much better. There, Indian villages are destroyed to make way for dams; the landscape is overrun with identical houses for identical businessmen and their identical wives and children. And any attempt to live a life in any way different is crushed. The Chief calls this process the workings of the Combine; we may see it simply as the workings of a modern society. By showing us the similarities between the Inside and the Outside, Kesey makes his book strike with considerable force--for we come to see that the victims of the Nurse and the Combine are not only Harding and Billy and the Chief, but perhaps we ourselves as well.

^^^^^^^^^^ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST: THEMES

Here are the major themes that Kesey treats in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. They're explained in greater detail in the scene-by-scene discussion of the novel.

1. FREEDOM VS. CONTROL

With McMurphy and Nurse Ratched, Kesey presents two ways of living in the world. McMurphy stands for the individual, the frontier hero who goes his own way no matter what the rest of society thinks. Nurse Ratched represents a desire for efficiency, order, control at all costs. While a case can be made for her view--mental patients undoubtedly need some control of their lives--it's clear that Kesey is on McMurphy's side.

2. THE POWER OF LAUGHTER

McMurphy's greatest strength comes from the way he can laugh at the world and at himself. Like Chief Bromden's father, he knows that the best way to defeat your enemies is by laughing at them. And the degree of sanity of nearly all of the characters in the novel is indicated by their ability to laugh. In the opening scenes no one can; later, the Chief's return to the real world is signalled by his laugh; when, on the fishing boat, the entire ward breaks into laughter, it's a powerful sign of the cure that McMurphy has worked in them.

3. THE IMPORTANCE OF SEXUALITY

Uninhibited sexuality is a big part of McMurphy's--and Kesey's--idea of sanity. Where sane men and women are unafraid of sex, many of the patients--notably Harding and Billy--are in the hospital at least in part because their sexuality has been thwarted. One of Nurse Ratched's greatest crimes is that she represses and denies the sexuality of her patients--and even, with her heavy white uniform, her own sexuality.

4. THE NEED TO FIGHT FEAR

Many of the patients believe that a single outside enemy--Nurse Ratched, or the Combine, or a society that disapproves of homosexuality--has brought them to the hospital. McMurphy comes to understand that the enemy lies not outside the patients, but within them--in the fear that makes them easy victims of Nurse Ratched and her allies.

5. THE POWER OF THE MATRIARCHY

When Harding announces that he and the other patients are victims of the matriarchy, he touches on one of the most controversial themes in the book. The repressive power the Chief calls the Combine seems to be represented mostly by women--Nurse Ratched, Vera Harding, Mrs. Bibbit, Mary Louise Bromden--who force men to obey society's rules and deny men's sexuality. However, McMurphy admits that not all "ball-cutters" are female, and other women, notably the black girl in the cotton mill, are shown to be victims of the Combine in the same way as are men.