One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest: Final Response

One Flew over the Cuckoo’s nest is a complex novel which results in leaving the reader with many different final ideas or thoughts about the book. It presented a few outstanding points about society and their judgment about mental institutes. Nurse Ratched represented mostly society’s view about the mentally ill. Throughout the novel she evolved as a cruel and evil nurse, she treated the men in inhumane ways, almost as if they weren’t people. Much of society views people with mental handicaps and disabilities this way. There was also an understanding that mental institutes during this time weren’t at all equipped with the proper knowledge to run a mental institute. The book also included a recurring theme of power and control, not only did Nurse Ratched crave and control every aspect of her ward, but McMurphy wanted to gain control of situations as well. Lastly, since the Indian, Bromden, was the narrator, the story wasn’t quite clear at all times. He brought the over all sense of not knowing whether things were actually happening or if they were only a “fog” in which he fell in and out of throughout the book. Over all the book could have effected the reader in many different ways, the reader had to relate to it to be able to determine what they got out of it.