Description:An international bestseller and the basis for a hugely successful film, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was one of the defining works of the 1960s. A mordant, wickedly subversive parable set in a mental ward, the novel chronicles the head-on collision between its hell-raising, life-affirming hero Randle Patrick McMurphy aAn international bestseller and the basis for a hugely successful film, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was one of the defining works of the 1960s.
A mordant, wickedly subversive parable set in a mental ward, the novel chronicles the head-on collision between its hell-raising, life-affirming hero Randle Patrick McMurphy and the totalitarian rule of Big Nurse. McMurphy swaggers into the mental ward like a blast of fresh air and turns the place upside down, starting a gambling operation, smuggling in wine and women, and egging on the other patients to join him in open rebellion. But McMurphy's revolution against Big Nurse and everything she stands for quickly turns from sport to a fierce power struggle with shattering results.
With One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Kesey created a work without precedent in American literature, a novel at once comic and tragic that probes the nature of madness and sanity, authority and vitality. Greeted by unanimous acclaim when it was first published, the book has become and enduring favorite of readers.
"Billy Bibbit's mother.
She may only appear briefly in the book, but that was more than enough to make me wary of her.
When visiting her son in the asylum Billy talks about leaving the place, getting a job, getting married and having kids all the while he has his head cradled in her lap with her hand petting his hair. When she hears of his plans she laughs and tells him not to be silly then asks rhetorically if she looked old enough to be someone's grandmother.
After the 'Candy' incident when "
"
“Because 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; he knows my thumb smarts and his girl friend has a bruised breast and the doctor is losing his glasses, but he won't let the pain blot out the humor no more'n he'll let the humor blot out the pain.”
"
Hootsaidtheowl added this to a list 1 year, 4 months ago
"When Kesey decided to take on the hypocrisy, cruelty and enforced conformity of modern life, he dug into his own experiences as a test subject in a mental hospital. In Cuckoo's Nest the irrepressible inmate Randle McMurphy does battle with the icy, power-mad Nurse Ratched to liberate, or at least breathe a little life into, the crushed and cowed patients she lords it over, while the book's stonily silent narrator Chief Bromden looks on. Both an allegory of individualism and a heart-tearing psych"
chuckmuck added this to a list 4 years, 9 months ago
Explore
Join Listal
Movies
TV Shows
DVDs
Music
Books
Games
Lists
Reviews
Images
6 comments
Listal's Favorite Books Poll (Ongoing)
Creepy Characters That Will Make You Shudder
Books
Misleading Titles
Time's 100 Best English Novels
