One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Novel)
I first read this back on my teens, in a paperback tie-in with the movie that had just come out. Jack Nicholson was on the cover, and it's difficult to read the book without picturing him as Randle Patrick McMurphy, the effervescent career crook who lights upon the sleepy ward of the Oregon State Mental Hospital. This time I was able to put Nicholson's image aside somewhat, for McMurphy is described as being a stocky redhead with a scar across his nose (he was played by Kirk Douglas in the stage version).
The book is narrated by "Chief" Bromden, a towering Indian who pretends to be deaf and dumb, and is invariably pushing a broom around. He's one of the "chronics," the supposedly incurable inmates, on a ward evenly divided with "acutes"--those who see a day when they will leave. When the book starts, Chief notes the daily routine, when the black orderlies arrive, and then comes the Big Nurse--Miss Ratched: "I'm mopping near the ward door when a key hits it from the other side and I know it's the Big Nurse by the way the lockworks cleave to the key, soft and swift and familiar she been around locks so long. She slides through the door with a gust of cold and locks the door behind her and I see her fingers trail across the polished steel--tip of each finger the same color as her lips. Funny orange. Like the tip of a soldering iron. Color so hot or so cold if she touches you with it you can't tell which."
Miss Ratched is one of the great villains in American literature, and it's easy to see the political allegory. She rules with an iron fist, more powerful than the doctors, and is not outwardly cruel. Instead she manipulates the men behind a series of rules and soft-spoken bromides. Her agenda, it would seem, is to keep things smooth and quiet, and to have the men fear her. She is the system, or as the Chief describes it, the Combine. They control things, and the inmates, standing in for the citizens at large, can't do anything about it. At least until McMurphy arrives.
He, on the other hand, is a breath of freedom. He is only in because he wanted to get out of the work farm, and figures life is a lot easier in the loony bin. But it dawns on him that once he's there, his release date is controlled by Miss Ratched. And he's stunned to learn that not all of the patients are committed--most can leave any time they want, but are convinced by the Combine that they can't function in society.
McMurphy changes that. Chief notices first that he loves to laugh, and laughter is not heard on the ward. McMurphy slowly antagonizes the Big Nurse, and eventually inspires the men to go along with him. He tries to get the World Series turned on, starts a gambling den in the tub room, and arranges for a fishing trip, which is a section that is so ebulliently written that a reader can't help but feel they've been on the trip. The men, whom McMurphy had termed "rabbits," regain their self-confidence, and though McMurphy may not make it, the message of hope is carried on.
Though the book is frequently funny, it is a tragedy at heart, with the character of Billy Bibbitt, a stuttering mama's boy. McMurphy, with his friend Candy the whore, gets Billy laid, and when Miss Ratched comes upon them she knows exactly how to strike back at McMurphy, through Billy--she will tell Billy's mother. When Billy reacts violently to this news, McMurphy finally unleashes his fury at the Big Nurse, but is pulled off, and cries out: "A sound of cornered-animal fear and hate and surrender and defiance, that if you ever trailed coon or cougar or lynx is like the last sound the treed and shot and falling animal makes as the dogs get him, when he finally doesn't care any more about anything but himself and his dying."
Kesey wrote the book while working the graveyard shift at a veteran's hospital. It contains treatments that are thankfully antiquated now, such as lobotomies and electro-shock therapy: "Across the hall from us is another bench, and it leads to that metal door. With the line of rivets. And nothing marked on it at all. Two guys are dozing on the bench between two black boys, while another victim inside is getting his treatment and I can hear him screaming. The door opens inward with a whoosh, and I can see the twinkling tubes in the room. They wheel the victim out still smoking, and I grip the bench where I sit to keep from being sucked through the door."
Where the book most differs from the film (which I will write about tomorrow) is that the film doesn't allow for Chief's internal monologues, his life as a boy among Indians in the Pacific Northwest, his reasons for being in the asylum, and his eventual reawakening, sparked by McMurphy. Though the film is very good indeed, the novel (as is usual) is a much richer and rewarding experience.
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