One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest: This Novel Drives Me Cukoo!

Our class has been reading a book called "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" for the past few weeks. This book takes place within a secure mental hospital, somewhere in the state of Oregon. All the characters that are presented in this book are diverse, with different disabilities. Although this book degrades many people and has strong usage of profanity, literary critics consider it to be one of the best books written during of the 20th century. This book illustrates a strong lesson of human nature versus nurture. I find it hard to believe that this book has been critically acclaimed all over the world and had a movie made from the original text. I found this book to be very disturbing to read, and I do not understand how some "cuckoo" could write such a lucrative book.

I did not realize that the book received much criticism for its apparent misogyny and racism. However, as I was reading the novel, I immediately recognized a number of offensive racial comments by the narrator. An example of such remarks was how he singled out the black orderlies in the institution by calling them "black boys" and how he referred to the nurses as being either castrated or prostitutes. I do not think that anyone in this modern world would consider such degradation to be appropriate. However because this book took place during the 1960's (when it was supposedly acceptable to say those things) there were no real consequences as opposed to consequences that would be imposed in this modern, post civil rights era. The narrator, a paranoid schizophrenic, often divorced from reality, presents to the reader that his credibility may not be 100%. The reader may believe him to be exaggerating the issues or they may be totally removed from reality. Many other challenges may also be brought into question. Paranoid schizophrenia is a significant disability that disables one from understanding reality.

In conclusion, the novel helped usher in the change in culture that defined the 1960's, also known as the baby boomer years, which helped define the different personality types that live on this world. Every character in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," came from a culturally different perspective. The moral lesson of this book is trying to illustrate the different types of cultures within our society. It utilized the backdrop of mental illness as demonstrating only one micrccosim of society. It chose the bad backdrop to illustrate society in general!