One flew over the cuckoo's nest (novel)

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One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (English title:. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest ) is a 1962 published novel of US writer and conceptual artist Ken Kesey . The author, who among other things had worked as a temporary nurse in a psychiatric institution and had experience with psychotropic substances , addresses in the novel the processes of a closed psychiatric institution in the US state of Oregon and their effects on the human mind, the novel being a criticism on behaviorism applies.

It is a parable about the society perceived as a totalitarian system, which leaves the individual only the choice between submissive self-surrender or exclusion and punishment. Just a year after its appearance, a play that Dale Wasserman wrote based on the novel was staged on Broadway. In 1975 the film of the same name , made by Miloš Forman, was released in cinemas and was awarded several Oscars, among other things.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is now considered an important work in American literature of the 20th century. The British newspaper The Guardian counted him among the 1000 novels everyone must read in 2009. Time magazine included the novel in the Top 100 English Language Novels published between 1923 and 2005. The reason for the choice was that the novel was both an allegory of individualism and a heartbreaking psychodrama that never got sentimental.

title

The title of the novel is derived from an English nursery rhyme. The verses

... one flew east, one flew west,
One flew over the cuckoo's nest,

precede the novel. The verses appear a second time when the narrator remembers how he and his grandmother watched over the salmon drying in the sun and kept the children busy with the counting rhyme for hours.

Tingle, tingle, tangle toes
she's a good fisherman ,;
catches hens,
puts' em inna pens ....
wire blier, limber lock,
three geese inna flock ....
One flew east,
And one flew west,
And one flew over the cuckoo's nest.

The absurdity of the counting rhyme is that three geese (geese) flying in a flock (flock) cannot fly in different directions (east, west) at the same time and the cuckoo does not build a nest. "Cuckoo" also means "crazy" in colloquial American language. The “cuckoo's nest” can therefore stand for the psychiatric institution.

action

The novel is told from the perspective of “Chief” Bromden, a gigantic half-Indian who his fellow inmates and the staff of the institution consider deaf and dumb . As such, Bromden has, among other things, a cleaning service in the institution and is therefore a witness to numerous events in the institution that remain hidden from the other inmates. During his school days, Bromden was a football star, but he graduated from college with a college degree and participated in the hostilities of World War II . Upon his return, he witnessed his tribe's father, chief, humiliated by government officials and his white wife, and betrayed of his tribe's land. Bromden then falls into a deep depression and begins to hallucinate. Bromden, who has lived in the institution for a long time, has been diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic , he is convinced that the outside society is ruled by an institution.

Bromden's stories focus on the rebellious Randle Patrick McMurphy, who is admitted to the asylum at the beginning of the plot. McMurphy was sentenced to several months in prison for violence and gambling. To avoid working on the prison farm, he simulates a mental illness. McMurphy experiences the institution as an inhuman system under the rule of the cold-hearted and power-obsessed head nurse Mildred Ratched. The inmates are immobilized with medication and electric shocks, and any attempt at independence is nipped in the bud. McMurphy makes it a sport to challenge Head Nurse Ratched and places bets with fellow inmates as to when he'll wear them down. Under his leadership, the men play cards for money or cigarettes, he heads the basketball team of his station, comments on head nurse Ratched's figure and instigates his fellow inmates to try in vain to watch the final of the baseball championship live on television. McMurphy also makes his fellow inmates aware of the ways in which Head Nurse Ratched incites them to humiliate and expose one another. McMurphy's unsuccessful attempt to tear out a heavy plinth in the washroom, he comments with the words "But I tried, though" - "At least I tried". For some of his fellow inmates it is the reason to defend themselves more and more against the conditions of the institution.

McMurphy had begun his time at the asylum with the mistaken belief that after the few months he still needed to serve his term in full he would be released from the asylum. His behavior changes for the first time when he realizes that this will not be the case. He won't be released until Head Nurse Ratched declares him cured. He is similarly shocked by the fact that a large number of his fellow inmates are voluntarily in the institution because they cannot cope with life outside. Disappointment with McMurphy's inclusion in the system after learning how much depends on Head Nurse Ratched's judgment drives fellow inmate Cheswick to drown himself in the pool. Cheswick was one of the first to flourish under McMurphy's influence and to oppose being incapacitated by Head Nurse Ratched. However, McMurphy is instrumental in ensuring that some of his fellow inmates go on a joint trip to deep sea fishing; an excursion that Head Nurse Ratched tries in vain to prevent. An argument shortly after returning from the outing results in Chief Bromden and McMurphy undergoing electroconvulsive therapy to treat their self-destructive tendencies. Both seem to survive unscathed. It encourages both men, who are becoming increasingly friends, in their desire to break out of the institution. It is only in the final key scene that Bromden realizes how badly McMurphy has been damaged by this therapy and that he only plays the indomitable rebel because of the other inmates.

On the day of the planned escape, McMurphy brings his friend Candy and their friend Rose to the ward by bribing the night watchman. They get drunk, and fellow patient Billy Bibbitt, shy and stuttering, has sex with Candy for the first time in his life after McMurphy urges him to. While they are drunk and waiting for Bibbitt to come back, they fall asleep, missing their chance to escape.

When Sister Ratched counts the inmates of the devastated ward and realizes that Billy is missing, she has the rooms searched and finally discovers him and Candy in one of the rooms. At first the celebrated Billy steps in front of Sister Ratched and the inmates with pride and without stuttering, but when the sister threatens to tell his mother everything, he kills himself for fear of Sister Ratched's threat. When she confronts McMurphy on Billy's death that he is not only to blame for Cheswick's, but also for Billy's death, McMurphy physically attacks her. He tears up her uniform so that her bare breasts are visible to all and tries to strangle her. He is eventually overwhelmed by the guards, who initially stood by and fell to the ground with a scream that Bromden likened to the sound of a cornered animal that knows it is going to die.

In the weeks after the attack, a lot changes on the ward: The doctor responsible for the ward is forced to request his discharge. Five of the inmates left the facility shortly after the incident and six more were reassigned to other wards. When Head Nurse Ratched returns to the ward after a week, Harding, one of the inmates, confronts her in an aggressive manner, and she is unable to regain her previous dominance over the patients. After three weeks, McMurphy is also brought back to the ward. Because of the lobotomy that was performed on him, he is just vegetating. It seems like Head Nurse Ratched won the power struggle between him and her. However, Bromden is certain of one thing:

“... he wouldn't have left something like that sit there in the day room with his name tacked on it for twenty or thirty years so the Big Nurse could use it as an example of what can happen if you buck the system. ”

"... he [McMurphy] would never have let something like this with his name on it sit around in the day room for the next twenty or thirty years, so that the head nurse could use it as an example of what can happen if you try to undermine the system . "

- Ken Kesey : One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Bromden suffocates McMurphy with a pillow and escapes the asylum that same night.

History of origin

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is Ken Kesey's first published novel. In 1959, when he was working on another novel and suffering from a lack of money, he took part in the CIA's MKULTRA research program at Veterans Hospital in Menlo Park, California , which tested the effects of psychoactive drugs. A little later he worked at the same hospital as a temporary worker in a psychiatric ward. Both experiences influenced the creation of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest . The novel was published in 1962, received positive reviews, and was an instant hit. The German first edition, translated by Hans Hermann, followed in 1972 in März Verlag , in 1982 the paperback edition, which is still available today (24th edition from 2003), was published by Rowohlt Verlag (rororo) in Reinbek near Hamburg. The stage version by Dale Wasserman was published in 1976 by S. Fischer Verlag in Frankfurt am Main. In 2007 the abridged audio book version on 6 CDs was published by Patmos Verlag in Düsseldorf.

Stage and film version

Jack Nicholson, Cannes 2001

A theatrical version written by Dale Wasserman was performed on Broadway in New York as early as 1963. Kirk Douglas , who had previously acquired the rights to stage the novel and also owned the film rights, played the lead role. Gene Wilder played Billy Bibbit at the premiere. Kirk Douglas did not succeed in getting a film studio to film the novel. He eventually left the film rights to his son Michael Douglas .

Michael Douglas produced the film of the same name, which was released in 1975, together with Saul Zaentz . The production company Fantasy Films had a distribution agreement with United Artists . The film received a number of awards including five Academy Awards : Best Picture, Best Director ( Miloš Forman ), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor ( Jack Nicholson ), Best Actress ( Louise Fletcher ). After It Happened in One Night (1935) by Frank Capra, the film was the second film to win an Oscar in the five most important categories - the so-called Big Five . One flew over the cuckoo's nest not only cemented Jack Nicholson's reputation as a character actor, but also helped several actors to breakthrough: Christopher Lloyd ( Back to the Future I – III), Brad Dourif and Danny DeVito made their debut in this film.

The film differs from the novel in several ways. He has a different narrative perspective, Bromden's paranoid fantasies are excluded and it is only very late in the plot that it becomes clear that Bromden is only playing deaf and mute. In contrast to the film, the prison inmates in the novel Oberschwester Ratched reject it from the start, they just fail to defend themselves against their tyranny. Cheswick's suicide, which is one of the key scenes in the novel, is missing from the film. The inmates' fishing trip is an act of rebellion in the film, in which McMurphy hijacks a bus, while in the novel it is a reluctantly tolerated excursion that head nurse Ratched tries to prevent by emphasizing the dangers of such a boat tour.

expenditure

Theater version

Secondary literature

  • L. Horst, Bitches, Twitches, and Eunuchs: Sex Role Failure and Caricature in Pratt, J, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: Text and Criticism , Penguin Books (1996).
  • MG Porter, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: Rising to Heroism , Boston: Twayne Publishers (1989).
  • E. Safer, The Contemporary American Comic Epic: The Novels of Barth, Pynchon, Gaddis, and Kesey , Detroit: Wayne State University Press (1988).

Audio books

Single receipts

  1. ^ Andrew Foley: Allegories of freedom: Individual liberty and social conformity in Ken Kesey's one flew over the Cuckoo's Nest . In: Journal of Literary Studies . tape 17 , no. 1 , 2001, p. 31-57 , doi : 10.1080 / 02564710108530273 .
  2. ↑ 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read: The Definitive List , accessed June 9, 2014.
  3. ↑ Time: The Best 100 Novels , accessed June 9. The original reason is: Both an allegory of individualism and a heart-tearing psychological drama, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest manages to be uplifting without giving an inch to the seductions of sentimentality.
  4. ^ One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , Penguin Books (E-book), ISBN 978-1-1012-0904-2 , p. 270
  5. ↑ Quoted from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , Penguin Books (E-book), ISBN 978-1-1012-0904-2 , p. 119.
  6. ↑ The relevant passage reads in the original “It was us that had been making him go on for weeks, keeping him standing long after his feed and lege had given out, weeks of making him wink and grin and laugh and go on with his act long after his humor had been parched dry between two electrodes ". Quoted from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , Penguin Books (E-book), ISBN 978-1-1012-0904-2 , p. 302.
  7. ↑ The relevant passage is in the original “First Charles Cheswick and now William Bibbit! I hope you're finally satisfied. Playing with human lives - gambling with human lives - as if you thought yourself to be a "God" ". Quoted from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , Penguin Books (E-book), ISBN 978-1-1012-0904-2 , p. 302
  8. ↑ The relevant passage is in the original "A sound of cornered-animal fear and hate and surrender and deviante, that if you ever Trailer Zoon or cougar or lynx is like the last sound the treed and shot and falling animal makes as the dkogs get him , when he finally doesn't care anymkore about anything, but himself and his dying ". Quoted from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , Penguin Books (E-book), ISBN 978-1-1012-0904-2 , p. 303.
  9. ↑ Quoted from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , Penguin Books (E-book), ISBN 978-1-1012-0904-2 , p. 303.
  10. ↑ Introduction to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , Penguin Books (E-book), ISBN 978-1-1012-0904-2 , p. 303.