First up, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962). The book's a thick read: 393 pages. I took some time to finish it as I read it over the course of a busy schedule. But I did finish it, and that's what counts because we tend to abandon books quite easily, especially when there's little time to devour said book plus said book makes for a tad boring read.

I have to admit, though, Kesey's writing style is not my favoured style, nor is the narrative style he adopted. It tends to be dreary and builds very slowly and even its climax is not much of a, er, climax. With that said, the text as a critical reading on society is rich in insight and allows the reader to question a lot of what we have accepted as 1) normalcy and 2) insanity. Who is the big shot that determines characteristics for either? Who or what determines what stays and what goes?
At an even closer read you find that the text deals with many metaphors. The setting is a mental hospital, for the most part. The narrator, protagonist and all the other characters are constituents of this situation. Some would read the text as a metaphor for norms, acceptance, rejection; for psychological ills; (contemporary) American society and on a greater platform for the human experience in society in general. Kesey does a great job at not being explicit about this and at keeping the narratives based inside this asylum, where I might mention a matriarch heads. Yup, this idea created quite the contestation in the literary/social critic parts of the world, from what I've studied. Given that the book is published in the very early 60's before the era of pronounced feminism, and when women were largely the subordinate subjects of society; does make one wonder why Kesey set such an antagonist structure for his novel. But again, if you ask enough questions measured against the contents of what Kesey implies within the narrative you'd come up with enough reasonable ideas as to why.
I'm going off on a tangent...
The thing is, the text is rich. If you love critically dissecting literature this one is a dream. Read it along with Michel Foucault's Madness and Civilisation (1961) and with literature on the panoptical world. On the ward of the hospital is a glass station where Nurse Ratched (the matriarch) stations to observe the patients - this is alluded to the panoticon in the sense of its purpose (designed for prisoners/inmates to be constantly conscious of being observed) - limiting personal freedom and constraining behaviour.
Also, the narrator suffers a history of colonial and imperial-induced violence to his identity, culture and familial community. Read into this too, or at least pay mind to it in observing his character and narration. The protagonist acts an an evasive character and saviour to the patients. There are biblical and Christian connotations written to him too. I read him as representing the instrument to anti-establishment. He is eventually-- nah, I won't give it away, but I found his fate rather sad, given the role he had taken upon himself in this institution of social organisation, hierarchical dominance, emasculation, punishment and surveillance; of dementia and frontal lobotomies. The other characters all represent some type of repressed identity, "otherness" - it's quite a triumphant read when you read it for a full and rich comprehension.
I'd go out on a limb and say the novel was written from an entirely masculinist perspective, rejecting all political correctness - and as feminist and womanist as my own perspective tends to be, I believe in being open to reading or hearing other narratives to make for complete reasoning of your own, allowing for measured critique or praise - views are verily misogynistic; and there is an act of sexual violation that alludes to "victory" (against turning man into machines) for the group of male patients. The scene is violent, yet I read it as representative of all other global conquests performed the world over, in history, that was termed as the "rape" of continents or states by way of patriarchal language.
Well, I had written a much longer post than intended. Hence I will only add one other Read Reflection, that of J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye (1951). Holden Caulfield, what a grim character. He really is. Most everything is of the phony nature to him. His narration is repetitive, exaggerated, inconsistent, and grim. But there are reasons to all of this. Andrew Blackman, author of On the Holloway Road, wrote a review to the book better than anything I could think up to sum up Holden and Salinger. He really did.
Please do read it HERE.
I'm going off on a tangent...
The thing is, the text is rich. If you love critically dissecting literature this one is a dream. Read it along with Michel Foucault's Madness and Civilisation (1961) and with literature on the panoptical world. On the ward of the hospital is a glass station where Nurse Ratched (the matriarch) stations to observe the patients - this is alluded to the panoticon in the sense of its purpose (designed for prisoners/inmates to be constantly conscious of being observed) - limiting personal freedom and constraining behaviour.
Also, the narrator suffers a history of colonial and imperial-induced violence to his identity, culture and familial community. Read into this too, or at least pay mind to it in observing his character and narration. The protagonist acts an an evasive character and saviour to the patients. There are biblical and Christian connotations written to him too. I read him as representing the instrument to anti-establishment. He is eventually-- nah, I won't give it away, but I found his fate rather sad, given the role he had taken upon himself in this institution of social organisation, hierarchical dominance, emasculation, punishment and surveillance; of dementia and frontal lobotomies. The other characters all represent some type of repressed identity, "otherness" - it's quite a triumphant read when you read it for a full and rich comprehension.
I'd go out on a limb and say the novel was written from an entirely masculinist perspective, rejecting all political correctness - and as feminist and womanist as my own perspective tends to be, I believe in being open to reading or hearing other narratives to make for complete reasoning of your own, allowing for measured critique or praise - views are verily misogynistic; and there is an act of sexual violation that alludes to "victory" (against turning man into machines) for the group of male patients. The scene is violent, yet I read it as representative of all other global conquests performed the world over, in history, that was termed as the "rape" of continents or states by way of patriarchal language.
Well, I had written a much longer post than intended. Hence I will only add one other Read Reflection, that of J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye (1951). Holden Caulfield, what a grim character. He really is. Most everything is of the phony nature to him. His narration is repetitive, exaggerated, inconsistent, and grim. But there are reasons to all of this. Andrew Blackman, author of On the Holloway Road, wrote a review to the book better than anything I could think up to sum up Holden and Salinger. He really did.
Please do read it HERE.