Long Live the Rebel

My First Time Reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Photo by Jon Butterworth on Unsplash

In case you’re new here, this is the part of my newsletter where I read and write about banned books. And this week’s reading was my favorite so far, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey.

It’s my first time reading the book, but I already knew the story.

The book was published in 1962, nineteen years before President Ronald Reagan signed legislation rolling back most of the provisions of the Mental Health Systems Act of 1980, closing down the majority of the United States’ mental institutions, and creating a large part of the homeless population we see in America today.

Prior to reading this, I had only seen the movie where Jack Nicholson stars as McMurphy, the untamable rule breaker who wreaks havoc on the military style ward run by the foreboding Nurse Ratched. The ward is punishing rather than therapeutic, a place where the patients are stripped of dignity, turned against each other, and threatened with shock therapy for non-compliance.

All this is done in the undercurrent. Never uttered, but understood. Nurse Ratched makes the rules, and everyone, including the staff, plays by them. Until McMurphy refuses.

A Summary.

The story is told from the perspective of Chief Bromden, an enormous American Indian patient who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and has been on the ward longer than anyone else. Ten years. He lives his existence in what he describes as “the fog”, entering into it to disassociate from the real world, pretending to be deaf and mute to avoid attention in the asylum. He observes everything, but never interacts. Never speaks. Never reacts. Nurse Ratched and the workers on the ward act as if he isn’t there.

That is until McMurphy comes.

When Chief first sees McMurphy, he notes that he looks strong, sun weathered, good natured. McMurphy is happy to be there, viewing the ward as an upgrade to the alternative, a work farm sentence for statutory rape. He pleads insanity, thinking he’ll spend his sentence playing cards and drinking orange juice. What he doesn’t know is that he’s stepping into Nurse Ratched’s ward.

An army nurse who runs a tight ship and controls every person on the ward from the patients to the doctor, McMurphy sees her as the power center, one he will overcome. He’s done it his whole life, bucked the rules and wriggled his way in and out of situations. No one else dares go against her. They know the consequences if they do.

But even after McMurphy learns of electroshock therapy treatments doled out as punishments for unruly patients and lobotomies for those who can’t fall in line, he can’t submit to the dehumanization, infantilization, and emasculation of life in the asylum. He pushes the line in what seem like small ways, but each win for him and the men on the ward is in direct opposition to Nurse Ratched, a woman who never shows her feelings but always gets her way.

Chief slowly emerges from the fog. He starts by raising his hand to vote in favor of McMurphy’s request to put baseball games on TV, the first sign he has shown the staff in ten years that he can hear and understand. And in the quiet of the night, he actually opens his mouth and talks to McMurphy, who suspected all along that he wasn’t really deaf and mute. McMurphy promises to make him big again with a special body-building program.

There is no real program. Chief feels bigger as he takes autonomy over his life, makes decisions for himself, remembers life before the asylum. He restores Chief Bromden’s belief in himself, and in the end he frees him.

Some favorite parts.

I’m painting with a broad brush here. I know the following isn’t the case with every institution. But it’s obvious from so many aspects of social programs, from the foster care system to nursing homes. Institutionalization dehumanizes people. It compartmentalizes, over-schedules, and sucks the life out of them. You forget how to make decisions for yourself, lose your strength, become smaller under the careful watch of workers with no emotional bond to you.

Asylums have historically been some of the worst (besides prisons). They are classically underfunded, overpopulated, and run in favor of efficiency rather than efficacy.

Whatever it was went haywire in the mechanism, they've just about got it fixed again. The clean, calculated arcade movement is coming back: six-thirty out of bed, seven into the mess hall, eight the puzzles come out for the Chronics and the cards for the Acutes... in the Nurses' Station I can see the white hands of the Big Nurse float over the controls.

In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the ward exemplifies the worst of it. Nurse Ratched strips the patients of any real life. There is no fun. No freedom. Not even to brush your teeth when you wanted.

“What you s’pose it’d be like if evahbody was to brush their teeth whenever they took a notion to brush?”

McMurphy turns loose the shoulder, tugs at that tuft of red wool at his neck, and thinks this over. “Uh-huh, uh-huh, I think I can see what you’re drivin’ at: ward policy is for those that can’t brush after every meal.”

“My gaw, don’t you see?”

“Yes, now, I do. You’re saying people’d be brushin’ their teeth whenever the spirit moved them.”

“Tha’s right, tha’s why we -”

“And, lordy, can you imagine? Teeth bein’ brushed at six-thirty, six-twenty - who can tell? maybe even six o’clock. Yeah, I can see yourpoint.”

No TV besides the news. No games to prevent overexcitement. No talk of sex (except when it is to degrade a patient). No cigarettes or good food. Everyday is a gray haze of medication, punishment for any real show of emotion. McMurphy stands in sharp contrast, reactive and demanding at all times.

Don't give me that noise, lady. When a guy's getting screwed he's got a right to holler. And we've been damn well screwed.

He brings the men back to life with stories and cigarettes, sex talk and beer, and my personal favorite, a deep sea fishing trip. When he proposes it, Dr. Spivey happily approves against Nurse Ratched’s wishes. In reaction, she finds and posts clippings reporting dangerous waters in Puget Sound on the bulletin board, knowing how scared most of the patients will be. It works. Most of the men don’t sign up to go.

The night before, McMurphy convinces Chief to sign his name on the list, leaving the whole ward wondering who did it for him. They head out in their asylum clothes and stop at a gas station. The attendants there see they’re from the asylum, and attempt to extort and humiliate the men and the weak willed doctor, but McMurphy won’t stand for it. He tells the attendants the men are from the loony bin and are traveling to a maximum security prison. He paints them as dangerous, insane, powerful.

Never before did I realize that mental illness could have the aspect of power, power. Think of it: perhaps the more insane a man is, the more powerful he could become.

Throughout the book he builds the men up. Makes them remember that they are human beings. That their diagnosis doesn’t define them.

I noticed vaguely that I was getting so's I could see some good in the life around me. McMurphy was teaching me. I was feeling better than I'd remembered feeling since I was a kid, when everything was good and the land was still singing kids' poetry to me.

---

Normally I go over the reasons this book is banned.

But if you’ve read my previous posts here, I’m sure you can guess them. There’s talk of sex, prostitutes, not to mention McMurphy’s criminal behavior. People don’t want their kids reading it for all the usual reasons. And they don’t want their kids idolizing McMurphy. In the 70’s it was challenged for vulgarity, leading youth astray, and was routinely removed from public school library shelves and reading lists for being too anti-establishment.

There may be reason for that, because I’ll say this: I fell in love with McMurphy. Not with everything he is. In real life people like him are chaos, a nightmare to wrangle into the neatly drawn lines that form our society. I wouldn’t want to be his mother. Hell, I wouldn’t want to be his mailman. He is unpredictable. Selfish. A swindler and a liar. Dangerous.

But we need people like him in society.

Not in the harmful ways. Unchecked psychopathy would mean the undoing of the world. But the rebellious part of him, the part that craves wild wind and freedom, entertainment and humor, all the things that are the antithesis of institutionalization, those things are necessary. They help balance the scales away from tyranny.

We are, in some ways, a society institutionalized after all. On the gentler end of that spectrum are modern day schools, where most children sit for 8+ hours a day, eyes to a worksheet and pencils in hand. The wrigglers, the wild ones, can’t usually handle that environment. They get labeled, punished for being bored. For not being able to concentrate. For needing to move. It’s all preparation for a life working a job where you will have to focus for at least eight hours, typically on non-creative tasks that are uninteresting. A chore. Unless you can buck the system.

McMurphy is a non-conformist, and not just in a cool wear your hair long work odd jobs sort of way. He is a social deviant. Allergic to rules, customs, and expectations. He ends up in a psych ward by choice, committed by the court system after he uses insanity as a defense. He enters the scene strong and proud, a sharp contrast to the beaten down men who spend their days going over their psychoses, neurotic fears, hallucinations and OCD tendencies under the careful watch of Nurse Ratched.

He is dangerous, sometimes violent, unpredictable and prone to outbursts. He speaks his mind, lies to people, gambles and uses people. He never pretends to be anything other than what he is. He is irreverent. Unapologetic. But he wakes the ward up out of their slumber. Reminds the men that they are strong too. Capable against the world no matter their diagnosis. He brings them back to life.

Damn, what a sorry looking outfit. You boys don't look so crazy to me.

It starts with their group therapy sessions.

These are weekly group therapy sessions where all the men on the ward participate. Nurse Rached, or the Big Nurse as McMurphy calls her, puts the meetings on as a way for patients to practice reintegration into society. They talk about their problems with one another, make decisions for the ward, and go over what is holding each person back from getting well.

It sounds nice, doesn’t it? Until McMurphy comes, many of the men are sold on just how nice it is. But it doesn’t take him long to figure out what’s going on. The real purpose behind them. It keeps the men divided. Gets them to turn on each other, to rip one another apart. It ensures they stay isolated, afraid, and most importantly, ashamed.

Harding is the target during McMurphy’s first group therapy sessions. The Acutes, a name given to the patients who are considered curable, gang up on him. They question his sexuality. Ask him why he can’t please his wife. Embarrass and emasculate him. And after the whole thing is over? They ignore him, ashamed at themselves.

McMurphy observes the session for what it is.

The flock gets sight of a spot of blood on some chicken and they all go to peckin’ at it, see, till they rip the chicken to shreds, blood and bones and feathers. But usually a couple of the flock gets spotted in the fracas, then it’s their turn. And a few more gets spots and gets pecked to death, and more and more. Oh, a peckin’ party can wipe out the whole flock in a matter of a few hours, buddy, I seen it.

Baseball, cards, stories and fishing.

That’s how he pulls them out. Getting TV set up so they can watch games. Organizing card games where they can gamble and bullshit like normal men for hours. Bringing a basketball in so they can play.

The everyday joys of life can break you free of so much. Being with people, connecting, hearing stories, laughing. It’s simple, but it’s a cure for so much of the everyday depression and anxiety that plagues the modern world.

McMurphy realizes he’s in danger.

He doesn’t realize how much power the Big Nurse has over the ward until he has already pushed the boundaries. It isn’t the easily manipulated Dr. Spivey who decides when you go home, if you do. It’s her. If you’re committed, and she wants you there for life, you’re hers. One of the heartbreaking parts of the novel is when McMurphy realizes that he is one of the few men on the ward who is actually committed. Nearly all of them are there voluntarily.

"You have more to lose than I do," Harding says again. "I'm voluntary. I'm not committed."

McMurphy doesn't say a word. He's got that same puzzled look on his face like there's something isn't right, something he can't put his finger on. He just sits there looking at Harding, and Harding's rearing smile fades and he goes to fidgeting around from McMurphy staring at him so funny. He swallows and says, "As a matter of fact, there are only a few men on the ward who are committed. Only Scanlon and—well, I guess some of the Chronics. And you. Not many commitments in the whole hospital. No, not many at all."

Sometimes rebellion is necessary. Sometimes it saves us.

Covered up by the army for years, the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War was one of the most horrendous displays of civilian killing. Women, children, and the elderly were marched into muddy ditches on March 16th, 1968, and mowed down indiscriminately. By the time it was done, over 500 were dead. Women were raped and mutilated, all under the watch of the American First Lieutenant Calley.

His troops would have marched on and killed more were it not for the intervention of helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson. He was ordered to provide cover that day as troops marched searching for Viet Cong hiding in the small villages that included My Lai. As he circled, he saw stacks of bodies piling up, including women and children.

Unable to communicate with ground troops, he landed, asking what was happening. Calley told him that they were following orders, and instructed Thompson not to interfere. Thompson, the child of strict parents who was known for his sense of humor and strong moral compass. He later landed his helicopter again, this time between civilians and advancing American soldiers. He helped the women and children escape, and instructed his gunners to shoot the soldiers if they tried to interfere in his rescue.

He reported the massacre to his superiors, eventually testifying against Calley, who spent one day in jail, and three years on probation. Hugh on the other hand spent a life facing death threats, the scorn of the American public who labeled him a traitor, and smear campaigns by politicians on Capitol Hill, one of whom even sought treason charges for turning his gun on American troops. He was brave. He was rebellious. And he suffered the consequences of that non-conformity greatly.

I’m terrified of group think.

I see so much value in order, in peace, in not making trouble where it’s not necessary. But I see a danger in peace at all costs. You can easily end up in a fog the way Chief Bromden did, choosing quiet over the punishment that can come with standing up for yourself or others. You need dissent in society. Some pushback that questions the norms we have set up for ourselves.

It’s a balance. Obviously we can’t have an entire country of McMurphy’s running around trying to tear down authority in all its forms. But we also can’t stand for constant passivity, a giving over of all autonomy to the powers that be. We need rebellious, chaotic people who shake things up, question the norms we have in place, make the people in charge answer for why the rules are the way they are. We need to put human freedom above all.

This book makes me want to live. To breathe fresh air and fight for what’s right. To never dehumanize another person, no matter their outward struggle. To uplift the people around me. To see them, the spark of life in all people and living things, and breathe on the fire a little more. To get an ugly tattoo and not care. To drink a little too much and laugh a little too hard. It makes me want to be free.

He knows that 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.