One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Ken Kesey • 1962
Devastation Rating
mental health injustice literary fiction trauma survival
Our Take
McMurphy arrives like light in a locked ward and Nurse Ratched extinguishes him with the mechanism of the state. Kesey writes institutional power as suffocation, and the Chief's narration makes the horror both internal and systemic. The ending is an act of mercy that leaves you devastated.
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