One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest

11 Pages 2835 Words

tier as well as a drug addict, has made him be known as that. Till this day, Kesey has not "settled down" and still claims to get the urge every now and then to do "Something Weird."



Critical Analysis
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
Julian Moynahan, The New York Review of Books, September 10, 1964, p.14.

“One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was a very beautiful and
inventive book violated by a fifth-rate idea which made
Woman, in alliance with modern technology, the destroyer
of masculinity and sensuous enjoyment.”

I do agree fully with this criticism. It is true that Ken Kesey does in a sense, focus on race and sex a lot in this novel. By putting Nurse Ratched as the mastermind and brains behind the whole operation, Kesey has stated that Nurse Ratched is an evil woman that wants to dominate and destroy whoever opposes her. He has made her look as a power hungry woman which likes to have things her way and wont change those ways for anyone. Practically throughout the whole novel Kesey also makes the orderlies that help Nurse Ratched look inferior and weak. Kesey could have put any type of man to portray an orderly but I feel, that because Kesey is a misogynist and a racist, he chose to put 5 black men as the orderlies. I also agree with this criticism because it states that “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest” is a very beautiful and inventive book. Kesey’s Novel is all that and more, and although he might focus on racism and sexual inferiority, (or evil superiority for this case) Kesey is still a master mind and his book is on of the greatest of all time.


Plot Summary
The novel basically opens up by giving the reader a feel of the ward, and how things are worked there. Chief Bromden, they narrarator, opens up the novel by doing his basic routine of sweeping the ward. He states how the black boys just stand around doing nothing until the head Nurse gets into the ward. The head nurse is Nurse Ratched. She...