John's family are big sports fans - golf, basketball, baseball, football, etc. I am a fan of books. Those don't always have to be two different paths but somewhere down the line, my parents exchanged reading for any kind of team sport and as it goes, here I am. Months ago in the midst of my comp exam studying, John's dad asked if I'd read this and when he found out I hadn't, he asked me to because he said he wanted to talk to me about it. That made me feel really good. I never once complained during football season, I love it when he and John play golf and to be honest, their love for sports has kind of rubbed off on me. Don't get me wrong, most of the time I'd rather curl up with a book than watch a game of anything, but I'm warming to PLAYING sports more and I honestly cannot wait until my first non-Spring Training baseball game.
I dedicate my reading of this book to my ability to be taught things in life that mean just as much, if not more, than what I'm taught in school or even what I teach.
I think this is unique to this Penguin edition, but I sort of wish the introduction hadn't given so much away, or at least, that I wouldn't have read it ahead of time because I would have liked to make my own conclusions about the symbolism. However, maybe without it I wouldn't have understood that the real story here was about the struggle between power and submission, about the Vietnam war, about government and prison. I guess I'll never know. Also, I've never seen the movie, so perhaps it's a good thing I had some idea about what this was going to be about. Anyway, without a doubt, I loved it. I loved it in the way I love Catcher in the Rye and Valley of the Dolls - as much because of the story as the time in which it becomes a story.
Here's what I journaled after finishing the book the night before last:
"You can't let other people/a system silence you, keep you down. I'm not sure what to make of McMurphy's death...what that's a symbol of...he brought them freedom and then he had to die for the Chief to realize his...maybe he's a solider and the Combine is war.
The Chief is a representation of the oppressed, the silenced, in all of us - what we just accept without thinking. Perhaps McMurphy is the war - the fight...the fight that isn't always won but must always be fought for things to change.
Why are there so many sequels and this was never continued? Perhaps we are to make of Chief's life post-breakout what we have within ourselves...the freedom to live unbound, to run in the grass in the direction of the dogs and make our own sequels to that which holds us back - to reinvent the life we were supposed to have that at first we were scared of living. Maybe we're all in an asylum of our own making and this book, Kesey, is asking us to break through and be new, have a voice, contextualize "crazy"...
A few of my favorite quotes:
"You get your visions through whatever gate you're granted" (vii).
"But it's the truth even if it didn't happen" (8).
"A man go around lettin' a woman whup him down till he can't laugh any more, and he loses one of the biggest edges he's got on his side. First thing you know he'll begin to think she's tougher than he is -- " (63).
"It wasn't even me when I was trying to be that face. I wasn't even really me then; I was just being the way I looked, the way people wanted. It don't seem like I have ever been me" (140).
"I had to keep on acting deaf if I wanted to hear at all" (179).
"...every time I see him put the bottle to his mouth he don't suck out of it, it sucks out of him..." (189).
"I just want to touch him because of who he is" (190).
"...he knows you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy" (214).
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