Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Reading Journal: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest #1

In One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, I think that the hero, though difficult to determine at first, would have to be McMurphy.  He encourages the other inmates to rebel against their terrible treatment in the institute.  McMurphy seems to have the same morals (in the ward, anyway) that the readers do, and we support him.  Taking both of those things into account, he would have to be the hero.  The villain of the book would have to be Nurse Ratched.  She treats everyone in the ward terribly.  She uses awful, degrading psychological processes on them, and everyone in the ward is terrified of her.  The Nurse has to keep everything running smoothly not for the patients' sakes, but for the sake of her power.  For example, "I see her sit in the centre of this web of wires like a watchful robot, tend her network with mechanical insect skill, know every second which wire runs where and just what current to send up to get the results she wants" (p 26).  At this point in the novel, I'm unsure of the antihero.

No comments:

Post a Comment