How to Read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

  1 FLEW OVER THE

CUCKOO'S NEST

ALSO BY KEN KESEY

Sometimes a Great Notion

Kesey's Garage Auction

Demon Box

Caverns (with O. U. Levon)

The Farther Inquiry

Sailor Song

Little Tricker the Squirrel Meets Big Double the Deport

The Sea Panthera leo

Concluding Go Round (with Ken Babbs)

Kesey'due south Jail Periodical

Ken Kesey

1 FLEW OVER THE

CUCKOO'Due south NEST

50TH Ceremony EDITION

VIKING

VIKING

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.s.A.

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(a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen's Green, Dublin two, Ireland (a partitioning of Penguin Books Ltd)

Penguin Books Commonwealth of australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Route, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books Bharat Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a sectionalisation of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, S Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:

80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Start published in 2012 past Viking Penguin, a fellow member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

ten 9 eight 7 6 5 four 3 2 1

Copyright (c) Ken Kesey, 1962

Copyright renewed Ken Kesey, 1990

All rights reserved

EISBN: 9781101575277

Printed in the Us All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Delight do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the writer's rights. Purchase just authorized editions.

CONTENTS

Ane FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST

Part 1

Function 2

Office 3

PART 4

1 FLEW OVER THE

CUCKOO'South NEST

To Vik Lowell

who told me dragons did not exist

then led me to their lairs

... 1 flew east, one flew west,

I flew over the cuckoo's nest

--CHILDREN'Due south FOLK RHYME

Office I

THEY'RE OUT THERE.

Black boys in white suits up earlier me to commit sex acts in the hall and get it mopped up before I can take hold of them.

They're mopping when I come out the dorm, all 3 of them sulky and hating everything, the time of twenty-four hours, the place they're at here, the people they got to work around. When they detest like this, improve if they don't see me. I creep along the wall quiet as dust in my canvas shoes, but they got special sensitive equipment detects my fright and they all look upwardly, all three at once, eyes glittering out of the black faces like the hard glitter of radio tubes out of the dorsum of an quondam radio.

"Hither's the Primary. The soo-pah Chief, fellas. Ol' Chief Broom. Hither you get, Chief Broom...."

Stick a mop in my hand and movement to the spot they aim for me to clean today, and I become. I swats the backs of my legs with a broom handle to hurry me by.

"Haw, you wait at 'im shag it? Large enough to eat apples off my head an' he mine me like a baby."

They laugh and then I hear them mumbling behind me, heads shut together. Hum of black machinery, humming detest and death and other hospital secrets. They don't bother not talking out loud well-nigh their detest secrets when I'g nearby because they think I'm deaf and dumb. Everybody call back then. I'm cagey enough to fool them that much.If my beingness half Indian ever helped me in any fashion in this muddied life, it helped me being cagey, helped me all these years.

I'thou mopping well-nigh the ward door when a key hits information technology from the other side and I know it'southward the Big Nurse by the way the lockworks cleave to the key, soft and swift and familiar she been around locks and so long. She slides through the door with a gust of cold and locks the door behind her and I meet her fingers trail across the polished steel--tip of each finger the same color every bit her lips. Funny orange. Like the tip of a soldering fe. Color so hot or so cold if she touches yous with it you can't tell which.

She's conveying her woven wicker pocketbook like the ones the Umpqua tribe sells out along the hot August highway, a bag shape of a tool box with a hemp handle. She's had it all the years I been here. Information technology'southward a loose weave and I can come across inside it; there'due south no compact or lipstick or adult female stuff, she's got that handbag total of a thousand parts she aims to employ in her duties today--wheels and gears, cogs polished to a hard glitter, tiny pills that gleam like porcelain, needles, forceps, watchmakers' pliers, rolls of copper wire ...

She dips a nod at me as she goes past. I let the mop push me back to the wall and grinning and effort to foul her equipment upwardly equally much as possible past not letting her meet my eyes--they can't tell so much virtually y'all if you got your eyes closed.

In my dark I hear her rubber heels hit the tile and the stuff in her wicker bag clash with the jar of her walking equally she passes me in the hall. She walks stiff. When I open my eyes she'south down the hall nearly to turn into the drinking glass Nurses' Station where she'll spend the 24-hour interval sitting at her desk-bound and looking out her window and making notes on what goes on out in front of her in the day room during the next eight hours. Her face looks pleased and peaceful with the thought.

Then ... she sights those black boys. They're yet down there together, mumbling to one another. They didn't hear her come on the ward. They sense she's glaring down at them now, but information technology's also tardily. They should of knew better'north to grouping up and grumble together when she was due on the ward. Their faces bob apart, confused. She goes into a crouch and advances on where they're trapped in a huddle at the cease of the corridor. She knows what they been saying, and I can see she's furious make clean out of control. She'southward going to tear the black bastards limb from limb, she'south so furious. She'due south swelling up, swells till her back'southward splitting out the white uniform and she's allow her arms department out long enough to wrap effectually the three of them five, six times. She looks around her with a swivel of her huge head. Nobody up to come across, just old Broom Bromden the one-half-breed Indian back there hiding behind his mop and tin can't talk to telephone call for help. And then she really lets herself go and her painted smile twists, stretches to an open up snarl, and she blows upwardly bigger and bigger, big every bit a tractor, so big I tin can smell the machinery inside the style yous smell a motor pulling too large a load. I hold my breath and figure, My God this time they're gonna do it! This time they let the hate build up also loftier and overloaded and they're gonna tear one another to pieces earlier they realize what they're doing!

But just equally she starts crooking those sectioned arms effectually the black boys and they go to ripping at her underside with the mop handles, all the patients start coming out of the dorms to check on what's the hullabaloo, and she has to alter dorsum before she'due south caught in the shape of her hideous existent self. Past the fourth dimension the patients become their optics rubbed to where they can halfway see what the racket's about, all they see is the head nurse, smiling and calm and cold as usual, telling the black boys they'd best not stand in a grouping gossiping when it is Monday morning and there is such a lot to get done on the first morn of the week....

"... mean old Monday morning time, y'all know, boys ..."

"Aye, Miz Ratched ..."

"... and we have quite a number of appointments this morning, then perchance, if your continuing hither in a group talking isn't too urgent..."

"Yeah, Miz Ratc

hed ..."

She stops and nods at some of the patients come to stand around and stare out of eyes all red and puffy with sleep. She nods once to each. Precise, automatic gesture. Her face is smooth, calculated, and precision-made, like an expensive baby doll, skin like mankind-colored enamel, blend of white and cream and babe-blue eyes, modest nose, pink little nostrils--everything working together except the colour on her lips and fingernails, and the size of her bosom. A mistake was fabricated somehow in manufacturing, putting those big, womanly breasts on what would of otherwise been a perfect work, and you can see how bitter she is about it.

The men are still standing and waiting to see what she was onto the black boys most, then she remembers seeing me and says, "And since it is Monday, boys, why don't nosotros become a good caput showtime on the week past shaving poor Mr. Bromden starting time this morn, before the after-breakfast blitz on the shaving room, and run across if we can't avoid some of the--ah--disturbance he tends to cause, don't you lot think?"

Before anybody tin can plough to look for me I duck back in the mop closet, wiggle the door close dark after me, concord my breath. Shaving before you lot get breakfast is the worst time. When you got something under your chugalug you're stronger and more wide awake, and the bastards who piece of work for the Combine aren't and so apt to slip one of their machines in on you in place of an electrical shaver. But when you shave before breakfast like she has me do some mornings--6-thirty in the forenoon in a room all white walls and white basins, and long tube-lights in the ceiling making sure there aren't whatever shadows, and faces all circular you trapped screaming backside the mirrors--then what chance you got against ane of their machines?

I hide in the mop closet and listen, my heart beating in the dark, and I try to keep from getting scared, attempt to get my thoughts off someplace else--try to think back and remember things about the village and the big Columbia River, call back about ah one time Papa and me were hunting birds in a stand of cedar trees near The Dalles.... But like always when I try to place my thoughts in the past and hibernate there, the fear close at hand seeps in through the retentivity. I can experience that to the lowest degree black boy out there coming up the hall, smelling out for my fear. He opens out his nostrils like black funnels, his out-sized head bobbing this way and that equally he sniffs, and he sucks in fear from all over the ward. He'southward smelling me now, I tin hear him snort. He don't know where I'm hid, merely he'southward smelling and he'southward hunting around. I endeavor to keep nevertheless....

(Papa tells me to keep nevertheless, tells me that the dog senses a bird somewheres correct shut. We borrowed a pointer domestic dog from a man in The Dalles. All the village dogs are no-'count mongrels, Papa says, fish-gut eaters and no class a-tall; this here dog, he got insteek! I don't say anything, but I already see the bird upward in a scrub cedar, hunched in a gray knot of feathers. Dog running in circles underneath, likewise much smell around for him to indicate for sure. The bird safe as long every bit he keeps still. He's holding out pretty good, just the domestic dog keeps sniffing and circling, louder and closer. And then the bird breaks, feathers springing, jumps out of the cedar into the birdshot from Papa's gun.)

The least blackness male child and one of the bigger ones catch me earlier I get ten steps out of the mop closet, and elevate me back to the shaving room. I don't fight or make whatever racket. If you yell it's only tougher on you. I hold dorsum the yelling. I hold back till they get to my temples. I'm non certain it's i of those substitute machines and not a shaver till it gets to my temples; then I can't agree dorsum. It's not a will-power affair whatsoever more than when they get to my temples. It's a ... button, pushed, says Air Raid Air Raid, turns me on and so loud it'southward like no sound, everybody yelling at me easily over their ears from behind a drinking glass wall, faces working around in talk circles but no audio from the mouths. My sound soaks up all other sound. They start the fog machine again and it'southward snowing down cold and white all over me like skim milk, then thick I might even be able to hide in it if they didn't have a concord on me. I tin't see half-dozen inches in front end of me through the fog and the only thing I can hear over the wail I'm making is the Big Nurse whoop and charge up the hall while she crashes patients outta her style with that wicker bag. I hear her coming but I all the same can't hush my hollering. I holler till she gets there. They concur me down while she jams wicker handbag and all into my oral fissure and shoves it downwardly with a mop handle.

(A bluetick hound trophy out there in the fog, running scared and lost because he tin't encounter. No tracks on the footing only the ones he's making, and he sniffs in every management with his common cold red-rubber nose and picks up no odor merely his own fear, fear called-for downwardly into him similar steam.) It's gonna fire me just that mode, finally telling well-nigh all this, nearly the infirmary, and her, and the guys--and nigh McMurphy. I been silent so long at present it'due south gonna roar out of me like floodwaters and yous retrieve the guy telling this is ranting and raving my God; you retrieve this is besides horrible to accept really happened, this is too atrocious to be the truth! But, please. It's even so difficult for me to take a clear mind thinking on information technology. Simply it'due south the truth even if information technology didn't happen.

WHEN THE FOG CLEARS to where I can see, I'm sitting in the solar day room. They didn't have me to the Shock Store this fourth dimension. I call up they took me out of the shaving room and locked me in Seclusion. I don't remember if I got breakfast or not. Probably not. I can telephone call to mind some mornings locked in Seclusion the black boys go on bringing seconds of everything--supposed to be for me, but they eat it instead--till all three of them get breakfast while I lie there on that pee-stinking mattress, watching them wipe upwards egg with toast. I can aroma the grease and hear them chew the toast. Other mornings they bring me cold mush and strength me to eat it without information technology fifty-fifty beingness salted.

This morning I plain don't remember. They got plenty of those things they call pills down me then I don't know a affair till I hear the ward door open up. That ward door opening means it'southward at least eight o'clock, means there's been maybe an 60 minutes and a half I was out cold in that Seclusion Room when the technicians could of come in and installed annihilation the Big Nurse ordered and I wouldn't have the slightest notion what.

I hear racket at the ward door, off upward the hall out of my sight. That ward door starts opening at eight and opens and closes a chiliad times a 24-hour interval, kashash, click. Every morning nosotros sit lined upwards on each side of the 24-hour interval room, mixing jigsaw puzzles subsequently breakfast, listen for a fundamental to hit the lock, and wait to run into what's coming in. There's not a whole lot else to exercise. Sometimes, at the door, it'due south a young resident in early on so he can watch what we're similar Before Medication. BM, they call information technology. Sometimes it'south a wife visiting in that location on high heels with her purse held tight over her abdomen. Sometimes it'southward a clutch of course-school teachers being led on a tour past that fool Public Relation man who'due south e'er clapping his wet hands together and saying how overjoyed he is that mental hospitals accept eliminated all the one-time-fashioned cruelty: "What a cheery atmosphere, don't yous agree?" He'll bustle around the schoolteachers, who are bunched together for condom, clapping his easily together. "Oh, when I think back on the old days, on the filth, the bad nutrient, even, aye, brutality, oh, I realize ladies that we have come up a long way in our campaign!" Whoever comes in the door is usually somebody disappointing, only there's always a gamble otherwise, and when a key hits the lock all the heads come up like there'south strings on them.

This morn the lockworks rattle strange; it'due south not a regular company at the door. An Escort Man'due south voice calls downwards, edgy and impatient, "Admission, come sign for him," and the black boys go.

Access. Everybody stops playing cards and Monopoly, turns toward the solar day-room door. Most days I'd exist out sweeping the hall and see who they're signing in, simply this morning, like I explain to you, the Big Nurse put a thousand pounds downward me and I can't budge out of the chair. Most days I'grand the starting time one to see the Admission, watch him creep in the door and slide along the wall and stand scared till the blackness boys come sign for him and take him into the shower room, where they strip him and go out him shivering with the door open while they all three run smiling up and down the halls looking for the Vaseline. "We demand that Vaseline," they'll tell the Big Nurse, "for the thermometer." She looks from one to the other: "I'm sure you do," and hands them a jar holds at least a gallon, "but heed yous boys don't group up in

in that location." So I see two, maybe all iii of them in there, in that shower room with the Admission, running that thermometer effectually in the grease till it's coated the size of your finger, crooning, "Tha's right, mothah, tha's right," and then shut the door and plough all the showers up to where you tin can't hear anything but the vicious hiss of water on the dark-green tile. I'm out in that location well-nigh days, and I see it like that.

But this morning I have to sit in the chair and simply mind to them bring him in. Still, fifty-fifty though I tin't see him, I know he'due south no ordinary Admission. I don't hear him slide scared along the wall, and when they tell him well-nigh the shower he don't simply submit with a weak little yes, he tells them correct back in a loud, flippant voice that he'due south already plenty damn clean, thanks.

"They showered me this morning at the courthouse and final dark at the jail. And I swear I believe they'd of washed my ears for me on the taxi ride over if they coulda found the vacilities. Hoo boy, seems similar everytime they send me someplace I gotta get scrubbed downward before, after, and during the operation. I'chiliad gettin' then the sound of water makes me start gathering up my belongings. And get back abroad from me with that thermometer, Sam, and give me a minute to look my new dwelling over; I never been in a Institute of Psychology before."

The patients look at one another's puzzled faces, so back to the door, where his vocalization is nevertheless coming in. Talking louder'n you'd recall he needed to if the black boys were anywhere near him. He sounds like he'south style above them, talking down, like he's sailing l yards overhead, hollering at those below on the basis. He sounds big. I hear him coming down the hall, and he sounds big in the way he walks, and he sure don't slide; he'southward got atomic number 26 on his heels and he rings it on the floor similar horseshoes. He shows up in the door and stops and hitches his thumbs in his pockets, boots wide apart, and stands there with the guys looking at him.

"Good mornin', buddies."

How to Read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

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