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by Ken Kessey
A tale of the conflicts between a tyrannical order and a rebellious con man who cons himself into a psychiatric facility in order to avoid the work house. As Randle McMurphy settles into the psych ward he meets a cast of characters, some there held “voluntarily” and others who will never leave. McMurphy’s main nemesis is Nurse Ratched, a figure who exercises total control of her patients through manipulation, fear and abuse. The Narrator of the novel, Chief Bromden sees Nurse Ratched as an extension of “The Combine” a mechanized totality that dominates society.
Written during a period of deinstitutionalization, or the closing of the massive psychiatric hospitals or sanatoriums that dealt with mental illness by more or less isolating and locking people away, Kessey’s novel deals with the interplay of freedom and control, psychiatric and hallucinogenic drugs, discipline and will.
by Ken Kessey
A tale of the conflicts between a tyrannical order and a rebellious con man who cons himself into a psychiatric facility in order to avoid the work house. As Randle McMurphy settles into the psych ward he meets a cast of characters, some there held “voluntarily” and others who will never leave. McMurphy’s main nemesis is Nurse Ratched, a figure who exercises total control of her patients through manipulation, fear and abuse. The Narrator of the novel, Chief Bromden sees Nurse Ratched as an extension of “The Combine” a mechanized totality that dominates society.
Written during a period of deinstitutionalization, or the closing of the massive psychiatric hospitals or sanatoriums that dealt with mental illness by more or less isolating and locking people away, Kessey’s novel deals with the interplay of freedom and control, psychiatric and hallucinogenic drugs, discipline and will.