ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST Part 2

In Part 2 of Ken Kesey's, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest I noticed a major change in McMurphy's attitude and the change in the hospital.  It seems as if everything has gone back to the way it was before McMurphy came.  The big nurse is in control again and everyone else just seems to blend in.  I think now the hospital became somewhat boring as well.  On page 181 it says, "whatever it was went haywire in the mechanism, they've just about got it fixed again.  The clean, calculated arcade movement is coming back: six-thirty out of bed, seven into the mess hall, eight the puzzles come out for the Chronics and the cards for the Acutes... in the Nurses' Station i can see the white hands of the Big Nurse float over the controls.  After reading this short chapter it basically confirmed all of my assumptions about the changes that were taking place.  Chief Broom used to see McMurphy as the person who would stand up to the big nurse and change the way the hospital was being operated.  I also felt like that chapter was about machinery as well.  The hospital is called the mechanism and at the end it says the controls are being operated by the big nurse.  This shows her power and control over her patients.  Since McMurphy is afraid of being moved up to disturbed he changed his attitude and no longers stands up to the big nurse.  This however causes other characters to become upset.  After the nurse limits the patients to one pack of cigarettes a day they become mad and want to do something about it.  On page 172, it says, "and that afternoon in the meeting when Cheswick said that everybody'd agreed that there should be some kind of showdown on the cigarette situation, saying, "I ain't no little kid to have cigarettes kept from me like cookies!  We want something done about it, aint that right, Mack?" and waited for McMurphy to back him up, but all he got was silence."  Cheswick contined to yell that he wanted something done about the situation but McMurphy still didn't respond to his screams so the big nurse carried out her plan for the cigarette's.  Then at the pool Cheswick drowned himself because he knew nothing was going to change at the hospital and he couldn't deal with it.  This shows McMurphy's effect on the other characters and how his behavior changed the hospital in general.  Overall, I enjoyed Part 2 of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and am looking forward to see if McMurphy changes his attitude back to how he acted when he first came into the hospital.

HAMLET at the Lantern Theatre

A few weeks ago when we went to the Lantern Theatre to see their production of Hamlet I was very surprised.  When we first walked in the space was very small and the set was basic as well.  I was unsure if the production was going to be good, boring, or just bad in general.  I was also concerned that I wasn't going to get the full effect because of the way the stage was set up.  However, when the actors began performing everything came together.  The stage that was very basic became different in some way after every scene.  The lighting was very good and the different color lights changed the effect of the set.  The actors were also very good at their jobs on stage.  They knew all of their lines and made the play much more easy to understand.  The actor who played Hamlet did a great job and he brought a lot to the character's personality.  He was sarcastic, and also made the audience understand how he felt about what was going on with the other characters especially his mother and uncle.  The play kept me entertained and also was easy to follow.  I did think it was a little long but it didn't change my opinion of the production in any way.  After seeing the play I understood the play better and it made me think about it more then if I hadn't seen it at all.  Overall, I believe that the Lantern Theatre surprised the audience and did an excellent job with their production of Shakespeare's, Hamlet.   

CUCKOO'S NEST , part one .

Discuss what effects Kesey has achieved through his use of stream of consciousness as a rhetorical technique.

So far while reading Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest I noticed that Kesey shares information with the reader by using stream of consciousness.  According to dictionary.com stream of consciousness is defined as pertaining to, or characterized by a manner of writing in which a character's thoughts or perceptions are presented as occurring in random form, without regard for logical sequences, syntactic structure, distinctions between various levels of reality.  I think that Kesey achieves a lot by using this technique to give background information or important information needed to understand or learn more about characters.

On page 11 of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, after hearing McMurphy say, "mighty nice fine day" Chief Broom thinks about his father.  He says, "he talks a little the way Papa used to, loud voice and full of hell, but he doesn't look like Papa; Papa was a fullblood Columbia Indian - a chief - and hard and shiny as a gunstock.  This guy is redheaded with long red sideburns and a tangle of curls out from under his cap, been needing cut a long time, and he's broad as Papa was tall, broad across the jaw and shoulders and chest, a broad white devilish grin, and he's hard in a different kind of way from Papa, kind of the way a baseball is hard under the scuffed leather..."

After reading this part of the story I knew about Chief Broom's father and the connection he made between someone familiar, his father and someone new, McMurphy.  I think by writing this way Kesey will make the book more interesting and easy to read.  So far I am enjoying the book and want to see how many different ways Kesey uses this technique to give more information to the reader.

HAMLET ACT II

When reading Act II of Hamlet, I liked the whole idea of a play inside a play.  Hamlet creates the play to basically catch his uncle, the new king in his lies and secret.  Deep down I believe Hamlet truly was unsure of what the ghost had told him.  He wasn't sure if he was crazy or if he was told the truth.  I also feel as if Hamlet didn't want to confront his Uncle Claudius and be wrong.  If he was wrong then more people would think he was crazy and his uncle would be mad at him for thinking like that in the first place.  I believe that Shakespeare creates suspense in the story by adding this into the plot.

I also noticed how all of the characters are hiding something or going behind each others backs to find our information.  In the beginning of Act II King Claudius and Queen Gertrude want to find out what's wrong with Hamlet.  Instead of confronting him themselves and trying to help him they basically hire his friends to find out for them.  I think this is strange because I feel like today most parents would just talk to their children.  The fact that Hamlet is also trying to find the truth about his father's death by putting on a play shows another way the characters are hiding things or trying to gain information.

Overall I think that Act II was very suspenseful and insightful.  Shakespeare creates many different stories going on inside the basic story.  He adds to the plot and shows some of the characters true colors.  By ending the act with Hamlet's soliloquy he set's the reader up for Act III.  I also feel as if at that point in the story you don't know what to believe.  When Hamlet starts screaming he really does seem crazy but is their a method to his maddness?