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5

To anyone who has not yet read this classic (or seen its multiple-award-winning film), I highly advise giving it a look.

Following the almost exclusively male Beatnik movement of the 1950s, and preceding the Second-Wave Feminism of the 1960s, Kesey's 1962 novel was ahead of its time. It predicts the feminization and sterilization of Western society, and foresees society's attempts to suppress masculinity through forced conformity in American institutions.

OFOTCN presents a social and sexual ideal: the drinkin', smokin', swindlin', gamblin', fightin', swearin', fuckin' alpha-male Irish "bull goose" Randle Patrick McMurphy. His particular expression of masculinity and maleness are treated by Nurse Ratched as a form of mental illness for which he is effectively tortured and killed.

The novel's narrator, "Chief" Bromden, must also explore his male identity following the trauma of his time in World War II (from which he actively dissociates through extensive hallucination and paranoid delusions) and his mixed parentage (an alcoholic Native American chieftain father and a socially-prestigious white mother). McMurphy helps Bromden rediscover his manhood and "builds him up" again. Though the narrative is stereotypical, it serves a useful literary purpose.

McMurphy distinctly summarizes Ratched's brand of power-mad, neurotic misandry in three b-words: "bitch," "buzzard," and "ball-cutter," which I'm sure many of us agree apply to today's strain of feminism. Though very much a product of its time, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was prophetic enough to apply fifty years later, and we would all benefit by considering its message today.

tl;dr - Read this.


[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children) | Copy Link

Great book, one of my favorites. Did not read it from a rp perspective back in high school though. I would've re-read it eventually anyway.

[–]RedPillJohnny0 points1 point  (0 children) | Copy Link

I loved this book, I loved this film, and I never once considered it in the RP perspective until now. Ho-lee-crap!

You can kill a man, but you can't kill an idea.

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