One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest discussion

The following from Schmoop: "Epigraphs are like little appetizers to the great entrée of a story. They illuminate important aspects of the story, and they get us headed in the right direction.
…one flew east, one flew west,
One flew over the cuckoo’s nest.
– Children’s folk rhyme.

The epigraph refers to a children’s rhyme about birds. The verses are taken from a longer children’s counting rhyme, part of which goes like this:

Three geese in a flock.
One flew east, one flew west,
One flew over the cuckoo's nest.
O-U-T spells OUT,
Goose swoops down and plucks you out.

One way to think the meaning of the epigraph is that there are two distinct groups presented: the geese that fly east and those that fly west. These groups are going in opposite directions, kind of like the patients versus Nurse Ratched and her hospital staff minions. The goose that flies over the cuckoo’s nest would be McMurphy, because he’s the one that ends up crazy (or cuckoo) in the end because of his lobotomy.

Notice how one goose also escapes and is plucked from the "cuckoo’s nest" or the asylum. That one goose would be Chief. But Chief didn’t find out how to escape alone; McMurphy played the savior, teaching Chief how to escape from the ward."

What do you think? It seems over-analyzing to me. The reference is fully explained by Bromden's escape.

Thank you for starting this thread. I think you may be right! But, oddly enough, I've always assumed the one who flew over the cuckoo's nest was McMurphy - by dying! He escaped from the cuckoo's nest, you know? Cuckoo = crazy and all, figuratively. (Sorry about spoilers, but if you've not read the book then you shouldn't read discussion on it :D ) I was actually talking about the poem where McMurphy was talking about his first experience with a woman. Did you ever notice that? :)

My copy is long-lost, or I would quote it.

The analysis doesn't hold up under scrutiny of text. Dunno where Mr. Schmoop gets his ideas.

I don't see "two distinct groups presented" in the novel. There are Acutes and Chronics, but they aren't flying in separate directions. There's also the Nurse, the staff, nothing that looks like east and west to me.

McMurphy is the goose (the "Bull goose loony") who swoops down and plucks out Bromden from the ward, the "you" of the children's rhyme. At the end of the novel, Bromden says he's flying as he is running out of the grounds.

There's also more to the rhyme when Bromden is up in Disturbed...there's reference to a female figure who catches hens and puts them in pens (Ratchet and the men).

McMurphy tells the patients after seeing them turn on each other in the group therapy that they're a bunch of chickens pecking away at each other.

Petergiaquinta wrote: "At the end of the novel, Bromden says he's flying as he is running out of the grounds."

"I ran across the ground in the direction I remembered seeing the dog go, toward the highway. I remember I was taking huge strides as i ran,seeming to step and float a long ways before my next foot struck the earth. I felt like I was flying. Free."

I just grabbed my book...there's also a key scene that connects to this on pages 163-165. Bromden is beginning to free himself from the fog. He's seeing the world outside the ward more clearly than ever. One night he watches through the window, seeing a dog on the grounds, smelling the oncoming fall, and hearing the sounds of Canadian geese, significantly making sounds like laughter.

He looks up and sees, "a black, weaving necklace, drawn into a V by that lead goose. For an instance that lead goose was right in the center of that circle, bigger than the others, a black cross opening and closing, then he pulled his V out of sight into the sky once more."

Another angle is that the cuckoo's nest refers to toxic mothering, with the cuckoo representing toxic mothers and nest being the home where warped men are raised by them.

The toxic mothering theme is addressed in another G-R post and repeated here:

"Again, this is a mental institution, not a cross section of society. If these men grew up in normal families with loving mothers they probably wouldn't be the way they are. It would be unrealistic, not to mention boring, to show them any other way. Witches beget angry misogynists, not Prince Charmings.

(This is not to say that all mental illness is caused by mothers, only that there are mental health and other social adjustment consequences to toxic parenting, and men's attitudes toward women are shaped primarily by their relationships with their mothers.)

Kesey made this mother linkage abundantly clear in Ratched's climactic bullying of Billy, who committed suicide rather than have to face his mother after Ratched threatened to tell on him.

The toxic mother linkage was also brought out in Cool Hand Luke, when Luke's dying mother, lying in the back of a pickup, visited him in prison. He broke out of prison to visit her grave, resulting in his death. Our mothers are important to us men, vital to what we become in life. They shape our world view, especially toward women. Show me a misogynist and I'll show you a man raised by a misandric, man-hater.

Toxic mothering was also brought out in Jeannette Walls' The Gass Castle, when she showed her paternal grandmother molesting her younger brother and suggested that her father, Rex, was warped for life by that horrible woman.

...

Don't expect men who have been tortured and warped by their mothers not to have trouble fitting in to society. Kesey accurately and courageously drove this point home in Cuckoo. But if we get sidetracked by the brutal way the message was delivered we miss the message.

Women in general have trouble comprehending the way these toxic mothers behave toward their children because their evil is invisible, carried out behind closed doors at home. It gets no press until it hits the six o'clock news with names like Susan Smith, Andrea Yates, Casey Anthony.

What Cuckoo does is shed light on a very important dark place in society. These people exist. They are a wound on society that must be opened and aired so it can be healed."

Here also Chief Bromden is the escaping cuckoo. His mother made his father "feel small," made him feel small. Ratched made him feel small. But Bromden felt bigger (grew stronger) after McMurphy enlightened him, made him so light he was able to fly away.

The poem is a counting rhyme, used by children to choose who is "it."

Ratched is the goose. She is in control of the men's lives, and her actions seem arbitrary to them. They spend their lives as if in a circle, watching Ratched and waiting for her finger to land on them.

I was not familiar with the rhyme until I clicked onto this discussion because the book only uses the middle stanza - one flew east, one flew west, one flew over the cuckoos nest - and I believe there is a reason for that. I think the cuckoo is the reference the writer to exploit and not he goose. A cuckoo is a strange bird in the avian world. An anti-social loner they often lay their eggs in other birds nest and are known to remove the existing eggs in the nest. This antagonistic, disruptive behavior coupled with the directionless existence implied by a bird with no nest to lay it's eggs perfectly reflects McMurphys' character and actions within the novel. Assuming the 'cuckoos nest' is the asylum were a directionless McMurphy - one flew east, one flew west- lands and disrupts the clinical, sterile world that nurse Ratched oversees with his rebellious, anti-social behavior parallels the actions of a cuckoo; at least in the general sense.

Also the expression of someone being cuckoo is not the same as someone being a crazy in kid-speak. When a person is called cuckoo it means that he is doing something strange or unusual that the other kids don't want to be a part of as opposed to lunatic behavior that would probably scare the children. This raises a question that becomes a minor theme within the novel. Is McMurphy truly crazy or is he gaming the system to get an easy ride in the asylum instead of hard time in prison? Is he cuckoo or crazy? Add the fact that cuckoos use multiple calls so that no-one is quiet sure if there hearing a cuckoo or some other bird also feeds into this theme. who Is McMurphy and what's his deal? That's a topic for another day but it feeds into my understanding that the cuckoo is McMurphy and the nest is the asylum.

Actually, while I'm thinking about the bird theme, McMurphy compares everyone to chickens at a pecking party, when they're all ganging up on one of the guys, maybe Harding.

Ratched is definitely not the goose. That's a image of freedom in the novel not control.

She's Mrs. Tingle Tingle Tangle Toes, if we're making connections to the rhyme.

Lisa wrote: "Actually, while I'm thinking about the bird theme, McMurphy compares everyone to chickens at a pecking party, when they're all ganging up on one of the guys, maybe Harding."

Yes, Ratched's main tool of control over the men is emasculation. In the ruse of group therapy she gets them to confess private fears and guilt, then encourages the others to probe ("peck") into the confessor's flaws, not in a therapeutic mode, but judgmentally, punitively, in a way that is ego-destructive. (This is also a mind control technique used by many cults and religions--emasculation through public confession.)

Harding had confessed about how insecure he felt toward his attractive wife. Ratched insinuated that Harding was at fault, that he was sexually inadequate. She encouraged the others to question him along these lines. McMurphy gets Harding to admit this is what has been happening, thereby enlightening the entire group that they had had a pecking party analogous to a flock of chickens that pecks at an injured member until it is cannibalized to death.

Lisa wrote: "I was actually talking about the poem where McMurphy was talking about his first experience with a woman."

Is this what you remember as a poem? It's actually a song that he was singing in the latrine when Ratched came in that first morning and he draped his towel over her shoulder to reveal his white whale shorts (around p.100).

"'Roving Gambler'

I am a roving gambler I gambled all around
Whenever I meet with a deck of cards
I lay my money down
Lay my money down, lay my money down

I had not been in Washington many more weeks than three
I met up with a pretty little girl
She fell in love with me
Fell in love with me, fell in love with me

She took me in her parlour, she cooled me with her fan
She whispered low in her mother's ear
I love that gambling man
Love that gambling man, love that gambling man

Oh daughter oh dear daughter how can you treat me so?
Leave your dear old mother
And with a gambler go
With a gambler go, with a gambler go

My mother oh dear mother you can not understand
If you ever see me a coming back
I'll be with a gambling man
With a gambling man, with a gambling man

I left her here in El Paso and I wound up in Maine
I met up with a gambling man
Got in a poker game
Got in a poker game, got in a poker game

We put our money in the pot and dealt the cards around
I saw him deal from the bottom of the deck
And I shot that gambler down
Shot the gambler down, shot the gambler down

Well, now I'm in the jailhouse got a number for my name
The Warden said as he locked the door
You've gambled your last game
Gambled your last game, gambled your last game

I am a roving gambler I gambled all around
Whenever I meet with a deck of cards
I lay my money down
Lay my money down, lay my money down."

No, I'm talking about where he was talking about that girl when he was 10. It was a hidden poem.
:)

I saw Ken Kesey recite this poem, live, in 1999. He used it to open the beginning of his 'Where's Merlin' tour with the Pranksters.

Vintery, Mintery, Cutery, Corn,
Appleseed and Applethorn,
Wire, Briar, Limber lock,
Three geese in a flock,
One flew east, one flew west,
One flew over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Lisa wrote: "No, I'm talking about where he was talking about that girl when he was 10. It was a hidden poem.
:)"

Okay, one more try...

This is toward the end of Part III, not near the beginning as you suggested. McMurphy had parked near the house he lived in as a boy and pointed out shreds of a yellow and black fabric (his "colors") in a tree, explaining it was the dress worn by the girl who took his virginity when he was ten.

From pp. 256-257..
"McMurphy put the car back in gear.
'Once I been here--since way the hell gone back in the year we were all gettin' home from that Korea mess, for a visit. My old man and the old lady were still alive. It was a good home.'
He let out the clutch and started to drive, then stopped instead.
'My God,' he said, 'look over there, see a dress? He pointed out back. 'In the branch of that tree? A rag, yellow and black.?'
I [Bromden] was able to see a thing like a flag, flapping high in the branches over a shed.
'The first girl ever drug me to bed wore that very same dress. I was about ten and she was probably less, and at the time a lay seemed like such a big deal I asked her if didn't she think, feel, we oughta announce it some way? Like, say, tell our folks, "Mom, Judy and me got engaged today." And I meant what I said, I was that big a fool; I thought if you made it, man, you were legally wed, right there on the spot, whether it was something you wanted or not, and that there wasn't any breaking the rule.'"

Here's the buried poem:
"So my colors were flown,
and from that day to this
it seemed I might as well
live up to my name
--dedicated lover--and
it's the God's truth:
that little nine-year-old
kid out of my youth's
the one to blame."

[the line breaks are mine]

Is this the hidden poem to which you refer? It seems poetic to me. Makes me feel nostalgic, and a tad envious.

Yeah Monty, I agree with you, over analyzed. But the east-west thing could simply refer to Bromden and McMurphy. As I recall some of the men appeared to actually want to stay there. It may have been a cuckoo's nest but it was still a nest.

I have trouble with partial quotations: is the author's intention to use the themes of the entire poem, or is he cherry picking a few sentences to illustrate a single point? ( I'm referring to writers in general.)

Silverpiper wrote: "...partial quotations: is the author's intention to use the themes of the entire poem, or is he cherry picking a few sentences to illustrate a single point? ( I'm referring to writers in general.) "

To me, the poem trumpets the overall theme of the book, the dichotomy of personal freedom versus the social tyranny personified in Nurse Ratched.

The poem's flag (his "colors") signifies a triumphal breakout to that freedom via his passage into manhood through gender unity, the girl having blessed him with her trophy dress.

Monty J wrote: "Lisa wrote: "No, I'm talking about where he was talking about that girl when he was 10. It was a hidden poem.
:)"

Okay, one more try...

This is toward the end of Part III, not near the beginning..."

That's it!!! :) I just liked finding a hidden treasure. It's been a while. I think there was some more hidden rhyme, nearby. Thank you. :)

Lisa wrote: "I think there was some more hidden rhyme, nearby."

Yes, I noticed it too. Here's a bit more from p. 256. Here Kesey/McMurphy describes lyrically the now abandoned house he lived in as a child:

[line breaks added]

"Out along the dim six o'clock street,
I saw leafless trees standing,
striking the sidewalk there
like wooden lightening,
concrete split apart where they hit,
all in a fenced-in ring.
An iron line of pickets stuck out of the ground
along the front of a tangleweed yard,
and on back was a big frame house with a porch,
leaning a rickety shoulder hard
into the wind so's not to be sent
tumbling away a couple of blocks
like an empty cardboard grocery box.
The wind was blowing a few drops of rain,
and I saw the house had its eyes clenched shut
and locks at the door banged on a chain.

And on the porch, hanging,
was one of those things
the Japs make out of glass and hang on strings--rings
and clangs in the least little blow--
with only four pieces of glass left to go.
These four swung
and whipped and rung
little chips off
on the wooden porch floor."


Thanks for calling attention to this portion of the book. It has some real meat.

It does. And I write poetry so I appreciate a good rhyme at the right time. ;)

Lisa wrote: "It does. And I write poetry so I appreciate a good rhyme at the right time. ;)"


A rhyme
In time
Saves mime.

:)

This discussion makes me feel like writing a book about my experience with psychiatry and institutions I didn't read the book but the movie was exaggerated compared to my experience. I'm not going to read the book becaus I don't want it to influence my style. I'm not aproffesional writer but I have kept some journals for the last 40 years. I'm 67 years now, so I hope I can at least write a short story before I die.

The book was written in the 1950's. Freud and Jung were still enormous influences and it was barely the beginning of modern psychiatric pharmacology. That being said, I think Kesey was way over-the-top in this novel. I never really liked it because of that.

I hope you aren't looking for a work of realistic fiction here...that would be a sad reduction of this sweeping book. Kesey is doing so much more than that in this novel!

Not really. I read this book in a college class and didn't particularly like it for many reasons.
Personally, I've always wondered why McMurphy was considered such a tragic hero when he was by far and away the originator of his own demise. He also sexually assaults Ratched and it's dismissed because apparently, she "deserves" it.
Sweeping? eh.

Isn't every tragic hero "the originator of his own demise"?

There might be another way to interpret it: Ratched is the one flying east, representing the ideology of communism, McMurphy flies west, representing capitalism (there are a lot o refrences to this in the novel) => both conform to some ideology, McMurphy is not a hero because he in the end conforms also to the social pressure of the patients running him as a proxy against Ratched.
The only one not conforming, getting way and choosing individuality again is the unreliable (!) narrator, Bromden.

Recent literary critics seem to rather read the book from his perspective. The McMurphy as hero story is something the film insinuates but Kesey himself was adamant to underline that he did not like the 'perspective / focus change' the movie made.

Bromden is the protagonist; McMurphy is the “hero.” These terms can be synonymous, but they don’t have to be.

But to equate Ratchet with communism and McMurphy with capitalism is a horrible simplification of what is happening here. The Combine in this world (the good old US of A) is a force of capitalism, the crushing destructiveness and dehumanizing force at the core of our society.

I did not say it is the the only possible equation, but it is a possible one. Just considering the Cold War context, characters play with idealized equations like this (e.g. the part where Ratched practically accuses McMurphy to act only for monetary gains). You could ,however, also easily equate Ratched with 1950s Momism, a feminized version of social constrictions etc., while McMurphy represent the male rebel for freedom.

I just think that literary criticism has for too long ignored that the book is deliberately written from the point of view of Bromden, whose hero is possibly for a long time McMurphy. In the end, the only one beating the system is Bromden.

I don’t think literary criticism has ever ignored that aspect of the novel...maybe you just haven’t been reading the right lit crit. How could someone discuss the novel without addressing the central role of Bromden? He tells us the whole story. It’s his story.

It's not just me making things up. Read Fred Madden and Christopher Leise on the topic, I think they make very valid points.

My thought of this title (on flew over the cuckos nest) was that the cuckoos nest is the mental institution. "Mac" is the one goose which is directionless in life and trying to get an easy way out of serving his time in prison. He is, in my opinion, obviously sane and represent the hero of the story. he reacts to the way the patients are treated, and in that way shows us (the audience) the wrong doing the mental institution are doing. the film is regarded as a factor of why the mental institusions went through a major deinstitutionalization during the 60.

Now with the divide created by the vaxx, the story gains a new importance and the Chief shows us how to rise above the phenomenal?
Great discussion btw

Wow... Ken Kesey's title has prompted such incisive thinking... and each view is provocative... But, from the moment I heard the title, it always seemed to me that Kesey meant the title to awaken us to an uncomfortable reality... that the unpredictable twists of fate, and the equally unpredictable results of our own actions, could cause any one of us to be fall into a mental institution. It concerns us and induces us to care about and identify with the protagonist. The title means, 'this happened randomly.. ... and it also suggests... 'what happens when someone who doesn't belong in a mental institution falls into such a situation.' And the beauty is that McMurphy, who is a branded as a "rapist" and punished because he lives passionately as an outlaw beyond social constraints, either proves himself to be a diamond at his core, or becomes that diamond in the crucible of the institution... where he sacrifices himself to convince Chief that he is strong enough to free himself. Themes and levels of meaning explode in all directions from this simple vignette... by simple decisions of the author such as writing the freed man as a Native American and a powerful giant. And isn't racial justice glimpsed as the white man sacrifices himself to rescue his imprisoned countryman.