I really liked the characters, especially the indian, you really get a sense of what it's like to be him. McMurphy is ofcourse a interesting man aswell, although a bit irritating. He's a bit like a five year old kid, "look at me look at me look at me!". The nurse gives me some serious chills, what an unpleasant woman she seems to be. I like the plot but then again I'm a sucker for mental hospital stories. It's truly a beautiful story in a way, although a bit dirty on the sides. I've already commented on how much I like the language the book is written in, I really like Ken Kesey's style. It's different and very bold I can imagine, since the book was published in 1962. One thing I'll have in mind after this project is to keep on reading english books. I read a lot of book written by english authors and I think it's always best to read a book in it's original language if possible.
Letter:
Dear Mr. Kesey
I'd like to start with a thank you. Thank you for writing this book and for having the courage to publish it. I can imagine what kind of critisism you got in the 60's when the book was published. I think it's very important that more books like this gets out in the public, stories about mental illness are often portrayed in a unfavorable way of the people with a mental condition. I did not get that feeling at all when I read your book, I thought that the people that suppoused to be sane seemed to be the most insane at times. My favourite character in this book is ofcourse the indian. It's just pure beauty when he breaks out of his shell, thanks to McMurphy. I think the book raises important questions. What's really crazy, and who? What makes us more sane than the people in the mental hospital, maybe we're just better at pretending to be normal?
Thank you once again for giving me a great reading experience, and that you broadened my view on how you can experiment with the english language.
Story:
There once
was a woman called Mary. She was a very old woman and she lived all by herself
in a little cabin in the woods. She always wore old fashioned dresses and on
top of that a tailormade coatee. The people in the village nearby
thought she was wicked, a cranky old lady that sulked all the
time. That was not true at all, Mary was just afraid to cause a racket
and she did not want to cause a nuisance. She almost never went to the
village and when she did, she held on tight to her wicker and cane. The
only time she went to the village was if she was out of supplies such as sugar
or flour, and when she went to the market she was so nervous that she fumbled
and jumbled and acted very fidgety. She was so nervous that if
someone came to close she snarled without meaning to.
On day Mary
had to go to the village to buy supplies so she could bake a cake. She went to
the store to buy some milk. There was a new man working in the store, a man she
had not seen before. He looked a bit crummy, he had stubble on
his chin, deep creases on his forehead, he had squinty eyes and
when Mary came up to him she noticed that he trembled. He was sweeping
the floor and as she got closer to him he looked up with a very bashful,
almost hostile look on his face. Mary looked around in the store and
noticed that the shoppers looked at him in a very unkind way. She was not the
type of lady that spoke to strangers, or anyone at all, she had no peers,
but when she stood before the man she heard herself say “Hello!”. The man squinted back at her and looked very cornered.
“Do you work here?” Mary asked the man. “I’m merely an aide.” He replied.
He seems mannerly, Mary thought to herself, although his hair is a bit ruffled.
He seems to be lonely, just like me. She really surprised herself when she said
“Maybe you would like to help me with some baking? I live in a cabin a few
miles from here”. He looked back at her, almost with an enthused look on
his face. “I’d love that. But why do you want to invite me to your home, can’t
you see the way the people look at me? They’re all afraid of me and I have no
friends at all”. Mary looked at him, almost maudlin. “I know what it’s
like to be an outcast, I know it all too well”. “What’s your name?” she asked
the man. “Mark” he replied. Mary smiled at him and said “Mark and Mary, that
sounds good to me.”
