One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

1962 • 336 pages

Ratings435

Average rating4.1

15

In this classic novel, Ken Kesey’s hero is Randle Patrick McMurphy, a boisterous, brawling, fun-loving rebel who swaggers into the world of a mental hospital and takes over. A lusty, life-affirming fighter, McMurphy rallies the other patients around him by challenging the dictatorship of Nurse Ratched. He promotes gambling in the ward, smuggles in wine and women, and openly defies the rules at every turn. But this defiance, which starts as a sport, soon develops into a grim struggle, an all-out war between two relentless opponents: Nurse Ratched, backed by the full power of authority, and McMurphy, who has only his own indomitable will. What happens when Nurse Ratched uses her ultimate weapon against McMurphy provides the story’s shocking climax.


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I was just... entirely uninterested. I have difficulties with classics sometimes. Oh well.

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September 30, 2022

This is another book I read during my master's program in social work. It was written at a time when patients' rights were being questioned, as far as voluntary admission into mental asylums and the use of electro-shock treatment. A fantastic read, as fantastic as the movie that was made about it.

January 1, 1971

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