(There may be some spoilers in this response)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest tells the story of drastic transformations within an insane asylum. It's the story of men, who have been forced into mental and social regression by their caretaker, fledgling and becoming not only themselves again, but functioning members of society. This is all due to one rambunctious, determined, clear-minded man. Being able to witness the patients break out of their caretakers reins is, while gradual, in ways both surreal and fantastic. Surreal because the ward itself is alien and strange. It is (at least the way I imagine it...) always filled with thick fog and distant, still shapes. All of the patients are lost in a endless void, being able to converse only from their past experiences, being able to think and live only because they had once thought and been a participant in a world that is now a betrayer and filled with vile, arrogant beings.Fantastic because the writing is able to depict such a place.
The man who changed the ward, McMurphy, still has faith in a world outside of the hospital, and if not faith, he has domination and strength. He lives in the way he wants to live and strongly encourages others to do the same. After weeks of laughing alone, other men began to laugh with him. After cracking jokes to himself and of taunting the caretaker, the Big Nurse, he slowly collects followers. McMurphy completed his feat by shaking the foundation of what had teased and ruled over the patients for so long. The force that made itself a dictator, a mother, a superior and one not to be trifled with, the Big Nurse herself. The Big Nurse is the pinnacle of sly threats and underlying hatred.She roams the halls of the ward, smiling an unmoving smile, walking in a stiff, bleached gown, looking down at the men of the ward, at the patients, at the employees, silently mocking their inferiority; their weakness and frailty. But, when McMurphy joined the ward, her powerful strides down the halls were interrupted by a man in boxers covered with whales. A man who attacked her authority and confidence.
How could one person drag down an entire system, a community structured around the wants of a single, dominate person? Is is McMurphy's toughened, sun-tanned skin? His wild, red hair? His bold, loud, assertive voice? Or is it just the fact that he's a slight change; the sun which pushes down on Einstein's graph of space, an indent that pulls the other planets towards it. The 'ripple in the water' if I may.
This book revolves around the idea of change. It teaches the reader that a laugh, a bit of fun, a pair of boxers with whales and a handful of persistence can force things to transform, and, whether this transformation is slow or fast, easy or hard, it's a change nonetheless and a lot of the time, a small change is all that's needed to turn out drastic results.
