Kesey’s Tragicomedy is Way More Psychedelic Than Its Famous Cinematic Counterpart

Yet another circumstance where I watched the movie before reading the book, but nevertheless found myself just a puddle of weeping goo by the end. This actually probably had the title of Book That Made Me Cry the Most before I read “Never Let Me Go.” And, I can’t express this enough, I KNEW HOW IT WAS GOING TO END. The fact that you can walk into reading a book knowing exactly how it’s going to end and be completely destroyed by the ending anyway is a legit testament to how goddamn good a book is.

And while the end of the book is, tragically, the same as the end of the movie, I was delighted to find that the rest of “Cuckoo’s Nest” is actually a lot different in the movie, more so in how it’s told than the story being told.

“Cuckoo’s Nest” is, of course, the story of R.P. McMurphy, the charismatic, boisterous, and brash new addition to a mental hospital, and the battle he does with its tyrannical and monstrous despot, the legitimately evil Nurse Ratched. But while the movie follows Jack Nicholson (which is, like, incredible casting having read the book) as McMurphy, the book is told entirely from the POV of his buddy in the ward, Chief Bromden, a massive and towering Native American who is unquestionably mentally ill, but nevertheless feigning being mute as to lay low and best observe the ward.

It’s this narrative choice, to have someone that’s evidently mentally ill narrate the book, that makes the novel far different from the movie, as Bromden often slips into hallucinations, or wild exaggerations and caricatures of characters and events. He’s not so much an unreliable narrator as a narrator lost in unreality. (I realize that’s my third use of italics in this review, apparently this book calls for a lot of dramatic emphasis.)

This use of the unreal in the novel’s POV almost serves to make the center conflict between McMurphy and Ratched not so much a personal one but, like, an elemental one. (I couldn’t help myself, had to italicize again). All of the hyperbole and psychedelic imagery (Kesey did a shit ton of acid) really drives home the book’s main themes of good vs. evil, individualism, and rallying against establishment much more grand and epic. And while the story of McMurphy and his fellow inmates fighting the good fight works phenomenally on a personal level, as the movie shows, Kesey’s original version works on that level, and accomplishes even more.

Oh, and it’s also goes from being comical and occasionally bizarre and trippy to the completely shattering and the saddest shit ever. Enjoy the laughs that bawdy McMurphy provides while you can, because the end of this one is an absolute doozy.