You All Crazy?

(1976)
By John Coleman

In the following excerpt, Coleman explores the themes of sanity versus insanity
and love versus hate in One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Ken Kesey's novel [One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest] caused quite a stir when it first
appeared in 1962, and rightly. I had heard vaguely of Kesey as a major prophet of the youth
revolution, read some disjointed scraps of his somewhere or other, and knew that his book
about life in a mental institution was supposed to have been written under the influence of
LSD: the auguries were unpromising. But the other day I laid bold hands on the thing and
found myself held enough to read it in a single session. Since events are transmitted through
the now befogged, now pellucid consciousness of a huge half-Indian, Chief Bromden, it may
be that some acid went into the creative melting-pot; but not much, I would hazard.
Generally, Kesey has complete control of his material, his characters stick up from the page
like so many wounded thumbs, the coherence and humour are in a different league from the
ramblings of a Kerouac.
1. Do you agree with the author that Kesey is deliberate and stylistically
effective with his narrative? Explain.

There is, however, an underlying theme: one enlivening day a bull of a man called R. P.
McMurphy is brought in from a penal work farm, feigning insanity, and in no time at all he has
the walking patients (the Acutes, as opposed to the Chronics, the Wheelers, the Vegetables,
and the people 'upstairs') striving to assert themselves against what he sees as the ballbreaking domination of Nurse Ratched, a great-bosomed martinet of some cunning and
sadistic intent. Randle McMurphy, an inveterate gambler, sets out to defuse her in a week,
and for a while his particular blunt therapy does wonders on his fellow-inmates. This is one of
the larger sentimental (or, at least, highly questionable) proposals that Kesey commits himself
to.
2. Coleman writes that McMurphy is feigning insanity when he arrives. Do you
believe, based on the representation of the character that the audience
receives, that McMurphy displays symptoms of any clinical mental illness?
Explain and provide relevant evidence to support your comments.

Write down your own question here relating to the comments above and the theme of insanity and mental health

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4. Do you agree that the McMurphys blunt theory/therapy does wonders on

the other patients for a period of time? Provide evidence to support your
response.

In the tragic event, the system proves too strong even for McMurphy and it is the disinherited
half-breed, long thought to be deaf and dumb, who makes the final escape.
Kirk Douglas bought the film rights, it was the marvelous Czech, Milos Forman who directed
the film. The result is an in-and-out movie, with a radical structural alteration made to the
original story. The biggest problem of all was inevitably what to do about that first-person
narrator. The answer has been to take the bull McMurphy by the horns and shove him firmly
centre stage, relegating Bromden to the sidelines till near the end.
Foremans representation of the patients characterises them as both idiosyncratic and
likeable. We have the spruce, white-haired old dancer, the man forever self-crucified against a
wall, the wheelchair general who thwacks a punchball with his walking stick, stumpy little
Martini who messes up all their table games, peeking at cards, swallowing the die, hysterically
flaring and subsiding Cheswick who worships McMurphy, stammering young Billy with his fear
of mummy, supercilious Harding, gelded by a flighty wife, and the great, slab-faced Bromden.
No question at all about whose side the audience was on, which is where I must quote Mr
Forman:
I can only define 'mental illness' as an incapacity to adjust within normal measure to everchanging, unspoken rules. If you are incapable of making these constant changes, you are
called by your environment crazy. Which of course indicates that mental illness is a social
disease.
5. What does this reveal about the film directors interpretation of the themes
and issues in Keseys novel?

Write down your own question here relating to the comments above and the theme of insanity and mental health
6.

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The trouble is surely it is more complicated than that. And yet Forman appears to believe it
that simple, enough at any rate to promote a modified form of Kesey's baddies (the staff)
versus the goodies (the patients).
7. Is it more complicated than this in Keseys novel? Is Keseys treatment of
mental health as simple as Foremans interpretation that focuses on the
patients lack of ability to conform and therefore function in society, therefore
making it a social disease

Source Citation
Coleman, John. "You All Crazy?" New Statesman 91.2345 (27 Feb. 1976): 269-270. Rpt.
in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 164. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Literature
Resource Center. Web. 2 May. 2011.
Document URL
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?&id=GALE
%7CH1100045368&v=2.1&u=bel82055&it=r&p=LitRC&sw=w

The novel on Insanity and Mental Illness

Read and annotate the following extract from towards the end of part 2 in the
novelMcMurphy acts like hes glad to get off talking about shock and lobotomy and
get back to talking about the Big Nurse. He asks Harding what he figures is
wrong with her. Harding and Scanlon and some of the others have all kinds of
ideas. They talk for a while about wheter she;s the root of all the trouble here
or not, and Harding says shes the root of most of it. Most of the other guys
think so too, but McMurphy isnt so sure any more. He says he thought so at
one time but now he dont know. He says he dont think getting her out of the
way would really make much difference; he says that theres something
bigger making all this mess and goes on to try to say what he thinks it is. He
finally gives up when he cant explain it.
McMurphy doesnt know it, but hes onto what I realized a long time back,
that its not just the Big Nurse by herself, but its the whole Combine, the
nation-wide Combine thats the really big force, and the nurse is just a highranking official for them.
The guys dont agree with McMurphy. They say they know what the trouble
with things is, then get in an aregument about that. They argue till McMurphy
interrupts them.
Hells bells, listen at you, McMurphy says. All I hear is gripe, gripe, gripe.
About the nurse or the staff or the hospital. Scanlon wants to bomb the whole
outfit. Sefelt blames the drugs. Fredrickson blames his family trouble. Well,
youre all just passing the buck.
He says that the Big Nurse is just a bitter, icy-hearted old woman, and all this
business trying to get him to lock horns with her is a lot of bull- wouldnt do
anybody any good, especially him. Getting shut of her wouldnt be getting
shut of the real deep-down hang up thats causing the gripes.
You think no? Harding says. Then since you are suddenly so lucid on the
problem of mental health, what is this trouble? What is this deep-down hang
up, as you so cleverly put it.
He sits still for a minute, listening to the hum from the X-ray room.

Response
Write down your own questions (2) here relating to the extract and the theme of insanity and mental health

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1. Is it possible that Bromden and McMurphys perspective on the cause of
the problem (their mental health issues) are not as aligned as Bromden
assumes in the narrative?
2. McMurphy never explicitly explains what he believes is the cause of his
and the other parients problems. Does Kesey deliberately leave this open
to interpretation or is it implied in the extract? Explain.

Discussion and Debate: What are you own beliefs in regards to the causes
of the problems that Keseys characters face? Which do you think is more
culpable and at play- Personal Responsibility or Systemic Dysfunction?