The book centers around the struggle between Randle McMurphy, a rebellious small-time criminal who feigns mental illness to avoid prison time-memorably played by Jack Nicholson in the 1975 film adaptation-and Nurse Ratched, the sadistic manager of the psych ward where he has been sent. Boasting of how far things have come from the “old-fashioned cruelty” that used to reign in such places, he tells a group of visiting teachers, “What a cheery atmosphere, don’t you agree?… Oh when I think back on the old days, on the filth, the bad food, even, yes, brutality, oh, I realize ladies that we have come a long way.” 1Īs Kesey’s novel makes devastatingly clear, however, this new-and-improved institution simply offers the same old abuse in a different package. N EAR THE BEGINNING OF K EN K ESEY’ S 1962 novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the narrator recalls seeing a public relations man give a tour of the psychiatric hospital where the story is set.
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