One Needs to Fly Out of the Cuckoo’s Nest
Chieko Dunham
“They’re out there. Black boys in white suits up before me to commit sex acts in the hall and get it mopped up before I can catch them” (Kesey 1). Those are the first two sentences of the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, written by Ken Kesey, champion of the “Beat Generation” in the 50s. I first encountered these two sentences while sequestered in my room during quarantine, reading the book for my hybrid version of AP Literature and Composition, a member of “Gen Z” and the modern age of technology.
I read Cuckoo’s Nest near the end of 2020 in the midst of the pandemic. I had been freshly activized in the sense that, at that point, I had already been to my first protest. I had started to have deeper conversations with my friends about our experience as women and as people of color. I didn’t have the vocabulary for it, but I was becoming more and more acutely aware of my intersectionality. I was growing more critical about the way my community and I were being represented. I also loved literature. I loved reading the “classics” and I loved having conversations with the adults in my life about the books they loved. Opening up Cuckoo’s Nest for my AP Literature class and being met with those two sentences, I became disillusioned and found myself suddenly wanting to oppose the adults in my life who enjoyed this book (adults who happened to be primarily white men).
As many of my friends know, I have an extremely complicated relationship with this book. I recognize it for the impact it held on society during its publication as a piece of work that highlighted the deficiencies of 1950’s American society. I recognize the power of its prose and its excellent construction of character, plot, motif, etc. However, as a modern reader, its impact is heavily diminished. I find that, through a modern lens, it actually works against its central message.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a story about how society wrongly treats its outcasts, setting “factory-like” standards for everybody to follow. Why then, I ask, are most of the outcasts and the “hero” of the story white men? Whiteness is nearly invisible within the book. While it’s never explicit if these men are specifically white, the clear distinction between themselves and the Black nurse aides implies otherwise. The negative tone in which the characters discuss the Black nurse aides also adds more weight to this distinction (though, one might say that this tone is simply in reference to their position as nurse aides, I would argue that the inclusion of their race in these comments creates another layer). Although the climactic scene between McMurphy, the hero of the novel, and Nurse Ratched, the villain and representative of “the machine,” is thematically and emotionally charged, was it necessary for him to violate Nurse Ratched in such a way to get a point across? Cuckoo’s Nest, while advocating for outcasts, villainizes women and people of color–people, who I’d argue, are more closely aligned with the status of “outcast” within society. The narrator of the book, Chief Bromden, is half-Native American, however he is willfully mute (both to fight against the “machine” and as an act of reluctance towards the “machine”), fulfilling the “Silent Indian” trope famous in American media. McMurphy, then, can also be understood as Bromden’s white savior as well–leave it to the loud, raucous white man to punish, correct, and save people of color and women! There is also an argument to be made that the book’s racism and sexism is simply a reflection of society, but again, I would argue that your main “hero” should not fit the demographic of the oppressor enforcing such a society.
I have to preface that I’m not saying you should not read this book; I think there is value to be found in reading this book–as much as I did not enjoy the themes I reference above, I still found it to be an engaging read. However, I believe that its presence as a fundamental piece in the “canon” in the modern age is overstated. In an era of mass book banning in America, I am hesitant to say that Cuckoo’s Nest should no longer be taught. I do not want to join the group of people who ignorantly overgeneralize great controversial pieces of literature. I read Cuckoo’s Nest in a high school setting and I feel that due to the nature of that setting, Cuckoo’s Nest requires a great amount of context to teach it while addressing the issues I have listed above. My teacher was not given the time or space to give me this context and allay my concerns (mostly due to the nature of teaching an AP class during the height of the pandemic). If this context is not provided, I feel that it would be a disservice by providing students a weaker understanding of the novel. Cuckoo’s Nest is simply not a book that wishes to critique racism and sexism despite its reliance on it. If I had to answer the question of what I would replace Cuckoo’s Nest, I would suggest Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man–a novel whose main character is also an outcast while simultaneously trying to rectify his identity as an educated Black man in America, moving from the South up to the North. If you are simply reading Cuckoo’s Nest for it’s outcast story, Invisible Man is a much better choice since it chooses to deal with racism (not so much sexism, sadly), a sharp contrast to Kesey’s novel. I feel it also reveals the truth of the “American dream.” Because there are better novels like Invisible Man which achieve the same goal in a much better way, I believe that Cuckoo’s Nest as a fundamental piece of the high school English “literary canon” should be reconsidered.
Bibliography
Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. New York, Signet, 1962.
