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Joseph Varnadore

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Joseph Varnadore rated a book it was amazing

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

by Ken Kesey

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Joseph Varnadore said: " You know that Green Day song? The one about a person going insane or... maybe they aren't going insane? Even the character in the lyrics isn't sure about it themselves.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is like that, but for over three hundred pages. C You know that Green Day song? The one about a person going insane or... maybe they aren't going insane? Even the character in the lyrics isn't sure about it themselves.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is like that, but for over three hundred pages. Chief Bromden’s narration is easily bending our perspective of reality, often making mundane scenes into terrible nightmares.
"She's swelling up, swells till her back's splitting out of the white uniform and she's let her arms section out long enough to wrap around the three of the five, six times."
The entire section was simply a nurse scolding her workers, but because what the Chief sees is what we see, it becomes hard at times to tell what is happening to him and the world around him.
But the story isn't about the chief, he's just the narrator. Instead, our hero of the novel is Patrick McMurphy, rough and tough gambler who worked from place to place, and found himself in the same asylum as the Chief. From there, it becomes a power struggle between McMurohy's rebellious influence, and the Head Nurse, who is running the whole abusive facility.
Many people only focus on this conflict between a rebel and an imperial, and even though it is the plot of the book, I feel that the characters of McMurphy and the Chief are the two most interesting interactions, as you can see that While McMurphy is being more drained by his time in the mental ward, the Chief is growing more sociable, saner because of McMuprhy's meddling. It's an interesting change that happens through the book, and I feel that it really represents the how character arcs work; someone visibly changes throughout a book; by the end, they should be a different person. Or not, but I've found that very few people have ever been able to pull off having a character reverting to their old self by the end of a book. The change in the two is, for me, more climatic then the final confrontation against the Head Nurse, because I feel that it just shows the biggest change between the two characters, were one person finally grows to become more responsible (or at least a little nicer), and another just becomes a whole new person because of how the first grew. I would suggest the book just of the basis of how interesting the growth is, and because the books use of language is really second to none. ...more "

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(page 254 of 325)
"digging this book. I'm a little sad that I've been going through the book so fast." — May 31, 2011 08:40AM

Jun 09, 2011 09:20PM · see review

Joseph’s Quotes

“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

tags: first-sentence, holden

222 likes

“Heroes exterminate each other for the benefit of people who are not heroes.”
― Havelock Ellis

tags: humor

5 likes

“Do you know the only value life has is what life puts upon itself? And it is of course overestimated, for it is of necessity prejudiced in its own favour. Take that man I had aloft. He held on as if he were a precious thing, a treasure beyond diamonds of rubies. To you? No. To me? Not at all. To himself? Yes. But I do not accept his estimate. He sadly overrates himself. There is plenty more life demanding to be born. Had he fallen and dripped his brains upon the deck like honey from the comb, there would have been no loss to the world. The supply is too large.”
― Jack London, The Sea Wolf

tags: philosophy

26 likes