Reading Assignment I

"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (focused on story, not story OR movie)

1) Our questor: a young rascal (adult, around 30 years of age), (probably righteously) imprisoned in an insane asylum; refuses to bend to the will of the overseers

2) A place to go: from the first scene of the movie, R.P.M. casually mocks the system that wants to break, er, "rehabilitate," (as best as possible, by any means necessary...) him but offers little in the way of actual resistance (goes with the flow; a laid-back bronco, not really scornful of the captors but stubborn as its cousin in rejecting riders); unable to take his ordeal seriously (the steed has the intelligence inherent in its relative), because of a lack of caring, he agrees to be given room, board and medication but strives to retain, and, perhaps, regain (total) freedom while incarcerated

3) A stated reason to go there: along with the usual games of "chance" (card games, "Bet I can lift that," and so on), Randall traps himself in an ever increasingly life-threatening (in several senses) bet - that he can get to the Big Nurse 'fore she can him

4) Challenges and trials: the nature of this significant mission strived at by such a charismatic jester causes this champion to create and scale his own milestones; a level-headed Irish hot-head butts heads with manipulative Ratched, whose charges include her boys and staff members, acting as sentries and guard: how to throw a bash with booze and girls when every portal is locked and, despite distracted (and "greedy"), archers at the ready, how to take the boys fishing in the middle of the day amidst all the pencil pushing, basket carrying, deceptively (as she (therefore they ('cept for her boys))are) vicious chastising of the day, how to provoke the leviathan with limited methods by which to

5) The real reason to go: deep inside his hard exterior, under his constant smile, cracked from sarcasm, he is devastated that such an old feeble insignificant mistress, with her rag-tag group of uncivilized underlings, has enslaved, shackling what's expected to be - meaning the entirety of those men; McMurphy wishes to see them restored to men (again) and not wrung out husks (; and, of course, refuses to let these men's fate befall him)