The Lost Cuckoo's Nest

When I was trying to think about what to write for my first blog, I was having a hard time thinking of what to write about. So, in order to get an idea of what to write, I decided to look at what other people blogged about. I came across Erica’s blog and found her comparison of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and the hit show “Lost”, a great idea. It shows how the ideas of this book are timeless and still relate to today. So I am also going to write about that comparison.

“Lost” is a TV show about two groups of people stuck on an island that holds many secrets and powers. The powers are beyond the control of the one group of people who crashed on the island, and in almost all control by the the other group of people who we would call “the others”. This situation in the show can very much is related to the book “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest” because the hospital they are living in also holds many secrets and powers.
With secrets, you find out that Nurse Ratched knows anything and everything about each patient. Also, within the whole ward there are secrets talked about at each meeting that the ward holds within its self. Just like in “Lost” there are secrets about everything that the island holds, the same thing is true with the Ward.

The Ward also has powers just like the island in “Lost” does, although in a different kind of way. In “Lost” the island has the power to heal. In “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest” the Ward also “heals” people or at least what they call healing. They use the power of the Shock Room and Lobotomy in order to “cure” people of their craziness.

There are also similarities between the people in both the book and the show. In the show “Lost” you have the group of bad people called “The Others” and the group of good people who just happen to crash on the island. In the book, you have the group of bad people who would be all the workers who torture the patients, and the group of good people, the patients, who happen to be put in the Ward somehow. Some voluntarily put themselves in the Ward, just like in “Lost” how some people voluntarily went back to the island, and some didn’t have a choice in the matter. Also in “Lost” there is the leader of the bad people, Ben, and what you would call the leader of the good group, Jack. This is also similar to the book because Nurse Ratched is the leader of the workers or the bad group, and McMurphy is the leader of the patients or the good group in the ward.

Another two characters that are similar in both the book and the show are Chief Bromden and the character Sun in “Lost”. In the book Chief Bromden pretends to be deaf and stupid so he can hear all the secrets throughout the Ward without anyone knowing that he knows. In the show “Lost” Sun does something similar by pretending she doesn’t speak English. She is one of the more important characters in the first season because she finds out things that no one else knows that she knows.

As you can see if you think about it, this book in many ways can still relate to entertainment and things going on today. As I read on I hope to find more ways to show how this book is timeless.