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

6. WHAT IS CRAZY? WHAT IS SANE?

The patients in the ward have been decreed mentally ill by society, and in some cases, by themselves. Certainly many of them show symptoms that cause us to label them crazy. But the diagnosis of McMurphy as psychotic makes us wonder about the validity of such labels, and when, at the staff meeting, Dr. Spivey and the residents display no more courage or rationality than do their patients, our doubts increase. Even Nurse Ratched's devotion to rules above all else can be seen as a kind of illness, one she shares with much of society.

7. SELF-SACRIFICE

McMurphy enters the ward as a man who, despite his friendliness, thinks of no one but himself. The Chief feels that only by not having anyone to care about has McMurphy been able to escape the Combine. The Chief fully agrees with McMurphy's attitude; he, too thinks it's useless to fight for anyone because the Combine will always win. Gradually, however, McMurphy sees that he's become a hero to the other patients and must act like one even at the risk of his own life. Parallels are drawn between him and Christ: both sacrificed themselves for others. Similarly, the Chief sees that he can't stand completely alone, and he fights alongside McMurphy.

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

The literary style of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is perhaps best analyzed within the book itself, when the Chief describes the ward as looking "like a cartoon world where the figures are flat and outlined in black, jerking through some kind of goofy story that might be real funny if it weren't for the cartoon figures being real guys." Many critics have noted Cuckoo's Nest's similarities to comic strips; whether you agree with that analogy or not, you'll probably agree that the book's characters are larger than life, boldly rather than subtly drawn. Nurse Ratched and her aides, for example, aren't so much real people as embodiments of pure malice. Like comic strips, Cuckoo's Nest is fast-paced and often very funny.

Indeed, though much of what goes on in the book is grim, humor is one of its hallmarks. Some of it, notably McMurphy's bragging, harkens back to Western tall-tales; the Chief's recollection of Santa's disastrous visit to the ward is black humor, darkened by grotesque irony.

Finally, it's interesting to note that before he became a writer, Kesey had gathered considerable college acting experience and had even tried out for parts in Hollywood motion pictures. Some of that theatrical expertise seems to show in his novel. Take a look at one of the group meetings and see how well he orchestrates them, just as a playwright or screenwriter might, letting each character reveal a little of himself in his words while simultaneously building tension. Perhaps this dramatic skill accounts in part for the novel's successful transformation into a play, and a motion picture.

^^^^^^^^^^ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST: POINT OF VIEW

Kesey's decision to tell the story of the Cuckoo's Nest from Chief Bromden's point of view, and his mastery of that point of view, are often credited for much of the book's success as a literary work. The Chief's seemingly random and irrational hallucinations, confusing at first, gain clarity when we see that in fact they are carefully organized to give us an understanding of the hospital we would never receive from a more traditional narrator. If we compare the characters' surface appearances to the deeper portrayals of them the Chief gives us, we can see his value. Nurse Ratched may appear a smiling, middle-aged woman to the Public Relations man and his tours; the Chief makes us understand immediately that she has something of the monster about her. If we passed McMurphy on the street, we might think he was nothing more than the scarred veteran of too many bar brawls; but through the Chief's eyes, and so through ours, he is a saviour. Even the Chief himself gains stature because we see him in such close detail. To the aides and other patients he is a towering but deaf and dumb and terrified Indian, irreparably damaged; we know that he is a sensitive, intelligent, noble man, a man well worth all of McMurphy's efforts to save him.

^^^^^^^^^^ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST: FORM AND STRUCTURE

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is divided into four parts. Though they differ in length, each part consists of scenes that depict rising tension between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched, culminating in a climatic battle: in Part I, with the fight over the baseball World Series; in Part II, with the smashing of the window of the nurse's station; in Part III, with the fishing trip; in Part IV, with the final fight after Billy's death. Notice that the stakes are continually raised, until the battle in Part IV is fought for the highest stakes of all--life or death.

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

Part I of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is divided into 15 scenes.

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

The opening scene is constructed to introduce the reader to two major characters, to hint at themes that will be developed later in the book, and to give readers an understanding of how the novel's somewhat unusual narration and point of view work--to let the readers know what they should believe, and what they shouldn't.

The story begins in medias res (Latin for into the middle of things), without introduction, as if some stranger suddenly grabbed us by the collar and began talking. "They're out there," the narrator begins. Who is out there? And who is speaking? We learn that the narrator is talking about the orderlies in a hospital, that his name is Chief Bromden (shortened to Chief Broom by the orderlies, in honor of his assigned task of sweeping), that he is half-Indian, and that he has fooled the patients and staff into thinking he is deaf and dumb. At the end of the first scene, he lets us know the events he's describing have taken place sometime in the past--the book is a flashback to that time.

NOTE: THE NARRATOR'S POINT OF VIEW. It won't take you long to see that the Chief's description of the morning's activities in the hospital is in many ways unlikely. It's possible that the orderlies do commit sex acts in the hall (later we're given evidence that the Chief's claim is true), and when the Chief describes their eyes as resembling radio tubes and their talk machinelike humming, he could be speaking in a rational if unusual metaphor. But when he tells us that the Big Nurse, angered by her staffs laziness, swells until she bursts her uniform and reaches the size of a tractor, it's clear we can't trust Chief Bromden to give us the truth--in the usual sense, at least. These are hallucinations; soon we realize that the hospital in which the Chief resides is a mental hospital. We see other aspects of his illness in his mention of a sinister Combine that tries to control him with machinery, and, towards the end of the scene, in his reference to the fog that obscures everything around him. Only when he recalls his Indian boyhood do the Chief's thoughts seem completely coherent. But even that refuge doesn't last: he says, "When I try to place my thoughts in the past and hide there, the fear close at hand seeps in through the memory." The pointer dog used for hunting becomes a bluetick hound, lost and baying in the fog.

Why is this book being narrated by someone so unreliable? Over the course of the novel we will watch the Chief's hallucinations come and go; we will watch the fog advance and retreat. Having the story told by the Chief gives us an unusual, insider's view into a troubled mind and into the forces that trouble it. The Chief's illness and the fight to rescue him from it make up a major portion of the book's plot.

Secondly, though the Chief is a fool, he is like the wise fools of Shakespeare: his words may sound crazy, but beneath their craziness very often lies unexpected sense. The Chief himself signals this fact at the end of the scene, when he says of his story, "But it's the truth even if it didn't happen." in these opening pages, the Chief's hallucinations reveal a skewed but strangely accurate understanding of the hospital, its staff, its patients.

The first major character the Chief introduces us to is the nurse on the ward, and we find a clue to her personality in his earliest mention of her. she opens the door easily because she has "been around locks so long." She is a woman who likes control, and to maintain this control she can imprison people for life. Much of the Chief's description--her purse jammed with gears, her anger that enables her to wrap her arms six times around the orderlies--is so distorted it becomes, in a literal sense, impossible. Some of it--her doll-like face, for example--is more or less realistic. But all of his words portray a person who, in her desire for perfection and power, is almost a machine. Even her name, Ratched, possesses a mechanical echo in its similarity to the word ratchet, as in a notched ratchet wrench. The one inconsistency in the nurse is her large, womanly bosom, and this she sees as a flaw. (We'll see the repression of sexuality becoming an important theme in the book.)

The nurse, as the Chief describes her, may be a monster. But if we visited her ward, would we see her that way? After all, she speaks nicely enough to her orderlies, sympathizing with them about "mean old Monday morning," and asking them sweetly to get back to work. Who hasn't heard such words from parents, teachers, employers? But thanks to the Chief's description, we wonder if the sweetness isn't just a tactic, and if there isn't a great hunger for authority and a great rage under that smiling, doll-smooth facade.

^^^^^^^^^^ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST: SCENES 2 AND 3

The next two scenes show us the hospital and its routine, then introduce us to the character who will shatter that routine.

Chief Bromden, who was drugged after refusing his morning shave, awakens. Although in the past such disobedience has earned him time in the "Shock Shop" (we'll learn the meaning of that unpleasant-sounding phrase later), this morning he was only placed in Seclusion. Now he's back in the day room with the other patients, and he shows us the hospital that is his home.