One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Gr 9 Up–Con man Randall P. McMurphy, convicted of drunkenness, assault, and battery, pulls a fast one when he requests a transfer to the men’s ward of a mental hospital to get out of the hard labor of a work farm. A ward of scared men is in thrall to the powerful, unflappable Nurse Ratched. McMurphy, charismatic and selfish, challenges her authority when a desire to make the men laugh—something, he’s observed, they never do—turns him into a person who cares about others. He relies on his own definition of manhood to reach them; whether he succeeds is for readers to decide. Kesey’s novel of life in a hospital for the mentally ill is a document of the 1960s. Its anti-institutionalism and celebration of boisterous rebellion against a seemingly rational (but unnecessarily repressive) establishment spoke to a generation of activists. The novel raises crucial questions about power and control, about how groups establish and maintain the kind of order that they deem necessary to their survival. While it includes disturbing and mature themes and experiences, and has clearly outdated stereotypes embedded within, it can be profitably taught to high school students to open stimulating and illuminating classroom discussions.