Journal Entry #30

This Tuesday, we formed book clubs in my English class where we would read a novel
about disillusionment. One of the novels I could have chosen was Fahrenheit 451, but because I
had already read that in middle school, I narrowed it down to two of the other novels that
sounded interesting called One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest and The Catcher in the Rye. My
teacher, Mrs. Rooks, said that she would recommend the former more because the protagonist
of the latter has a viewpoint on life that can get annoying/frustrating, so I ended up choosing
One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. She says that the protagonist of this novel does have a
similar viewpoint, but it is more understandable due to his situation. The protagonist of One
Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, Chief Bromden, is a man of Native American descent who
currently resides in a psychiatric hospital where the head Nurse Ratched rules with an iron fist
and provides little actual medical assistance. Bromden, however, has proven so far to be of
little importance to the plot, and rather serves as the eyes through which the reader
experiences this story. Thats not to say that he has no characterization, though, and this could
very well change later into the book. As it stands now, though, what we do know of him is very
limited, or at the very least, can be easily explained. Bromden isnt exactly in the best of mental
conditions, and this affects his narration, such as when he hallucinates Nurse Ratched as a
monster. In fact, this was an interesting topic when Mrs. Rooks discussed the novel with my
group. She said that, in ancient Greece, people believed that the mentally ill saw a part of
reality that we could not see. However, beyond that, all we know is that he pretends to be both
deaf and mute so as to avoid as much mistreatment from Ratched and the staff as possible.
From what I can tell, the main plot focuses on a new arrival to the hospital, Randle Patrick
Murphy, as he leads the other patients in open defiance of Nurse Ratched and her policies. To
find out anything else, though, I must read on!