1. CONTENT: Write about two quotes that indicate some key themes of this excerpt from The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Do you see them in any way in the novel? How do they change how you read the novel?
2. STYLE: How does the style of the piece relate to its content? How does the style of the piece relate to the style of the novel? How does the style of the piece relate to the themes/content of the novel? Use two examples from the piece.
"as if for the first time he has entered a moment in his life and known exactly what is happening to his senses"
ReplyDeleteOne of the main themes of the reading is the heightened awareness that the patients obtained by taking the LSD. The quote shows how he is experiencing a completely new sensation - one that allows his senses to improve greatly. By heightening the patients' senses, the LSD is making the patients unlike other people. This connects to insanity because people who are insane are people who are mentally different from everyone else. (Insanity is not just defined by this though...) Connecting to the novel, I wonder whether the insane patients have heightened senses like those who are on LSD. It doesn't seem this way so far in the novel, because many of the patients in the ward appear mentally disabled. Others, like Harding and Chief, are able to make sense of their surroundings and don't appear to be very insane at all. However, even for these people, it does not seem as though their senses are any better than those of a normal person... Reading the novel from now on, I will think more about the patients' senses.
"the volunteers were laboratory animals that had to be dealt with objectively, quantitatively"
This quote shows another theme of the passage, the fact that those under LSD are truly part of an experiment; the patients are "laboratory animals." Due to the intriguing nature of the effects of LSD, I almost forgot that the people were test subjects that are being watched and examined by doctors. This is very similar to the situation in the novel: the insane people are being watched and examined by doctors. Since Kesey wrote the novel, the experience he had under LSD clearly has a major impact on the nature of the novel. The watchful doctors and distribution of pills definitely originate from his experience under LSD. As I continue to read the book, I will be thinking about how the characters relate to people who are being experimented on...
That post ^ was about content...
ReplyDeleteSTYLE:
"not actually a sound, either, but a great suffusing presence, visual, almost tactile, a great impacting of...blue...all around him and suddenly he was in a realm of consciousness he had never dreamed of before"
The style of the passage is unorganized and confusing. There is a lack of sentence structure and an abundance of strange images. Thoughts and experiences are combined into long sentences that seem jumbled together. This quote is an example of this; it shows a very confusing image and is an unorganized/strange sentence. It relates to the content of the passage because it is describing people who are under the influence of LSD. Since the people on LSD are experiencing strange sensations, it is suitable for the style of the writing to be strange as well. The style of the novel is similar to the style of the passage; the novel's style is also unstructured and strange at times. This is because Chief, an insane person, is telling the story. The content of this quote (seeing "blue") relates to the novel-specifically when Chief is blinded by the fog.
This style of writing is also seen later in the passage where the words "Miles" and "faces" are repeated over and over after a series of indentations. This is another example of strange and unorganized writing. Once again, it matches the content of the passage and the style of the novel. It also matches the content of the novel since it is a story about insane people...
CONTENT:
ReplyDelete"all of us have a great deal of our minds locked shut. we're shut off from our own world. and these drugs seem to be the key to open these locked doors"
This excerpt from the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test really conveys the piece's key idea, which is that psychedelic drugs such as LSD open people up to great ideas and revelations that they had never thought of in their normal states. LSD makes the patients in the excerpt connect with themselves on an incomprehensible level, and understand others in a profound way as well. Like Robert, I also wonder if the jumbled strains of thought that Ken Kesey experienced while under LSD are what Chief Broom and the other patients experience. Chief Broom doesn't seem to experience that extent of insanity in the novel, but he does have the heightened state of awareness that LSD gives Ken Kesey. He notices many small details, and he seems to really understand more about the patients in the ward than they understand about themselves. Chief Broom also experiences things a bit differently from everyone else; some of his perceptions of what happens around him are unrealistic to the readers, although they may be quite realistic in his mind. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test makes me contemplate the levels of insanity of the ward's patients and Chief Broom. After reading this, I will definitely pay more attention to the characters and their perceptions of the world around them.
"the experience of the barrier between the subjective and the objective, the personal and the impersonal, the I and the not-I disappearing...that feeling!"
Like in the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, there is a blurring between black and white, reality and imagination, and truth and lies in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Chief Broom says that even though something isn't the truth, that it has to be taken as the truth. The state of living in the ward compares to this drug-induced state in the way that the patients, and even those who work in the hospital and who aren't "insane, blur boundaries of life. This makes me wonder about the divides between insanity and sanity; those lines have always seemed so defined but after reading these pieces of literature there seems to be a vast amount of gray area. This idea complicates the book a bit more in my opinion.
STYLE:
ReplyDelete"the ceiling is moving - not in a crazed swirl but along its own planes its own planes of light and shadow and surface not nearly so nice and smooth as plasterer Super Plaster Man intended..."
The style of writing in the passage is, as Robert said, very unorganized and confusing. The confusion of the words increases as the patient moves deeper under the control of LSD. The heightened state of awareness and connection with the world is seen in the jumbled description; Ken Kesey is viewing simple objects with a profound train of thought that could translate into a deeper meaning. This description of the ceiling somewhat compares to the overly embellished descriptions of Chief Broom. For instance, he describes many of the workers and patients in the ward in a similar manner. Descriptions such as these are what pull me towards the notion that Chief Broom might actually be insane, since he experiences things so differently from everyone else.
CONTENT:
ReplyDelete"… Kesey can now see into him…he does more than sees the tremor, he understands it, he can- almost seen!- see each muscle fiber decussate, pulling the poor jelly of his lip to the left and the fibers one by one leading back into infrared caverns of the body, through transistor-radio innards of nerve tangles, each one on Red Alert, the poor ninny's inner hooks desperately trying to make the little writhing bastard's keep still in there, I am Doctor, this is a human specimen before me…"
The idea of being able to see into people and things and having perspective changed is present throughout the excerpt. This also reminds me of the way Chief sees things on the ward. He sees people in this way, as if he can see inside them and he seems to understand things inherently. He sees the way the Nurse blows up and he sees the reasons why people act certain ways. Through watching people, and perhaps through insanity, he sees how people think and why the act the way they do. This also reminds me of the attitude of the Big Nurse, because the doctor in this situation is desperately trying to control himself, and he may not even see this, but Kesey, on LSD, does see it, and vividly. This is similar to Chief's observations of Nurse Ratched and it makes me wonder how she sees herself when she tries to control herself and to keep others under her strict rules. I had also never thought before that it may be as much of a struggle for the nurse to control herself as it is to control others. Robert mentioned the volunteers as experiments, and I had been thinking about that too, and wondering how people can see other people as objects or animals to be tested on, and I'm sure this experience must have had an effect on Kesey's writing and depiction of characters. There is also, of course, the mention of machinery and I wonder if this idea and experience have anything to do with the constant mention of machinery in the book.
"Kesey was soaring on LSD and his sense of time was wasted, and thousands of thoughts per second were rapping around between synapses, fractions of a second, so what the hell is a minute… he remembered that his pulse had been running 75 beats a minute every time they took it, so when Dr. Fog says 'Go,' Kesey slyly slides his slithering finger onto his pulse and counts up to 75 and says: "Now!" (43)
This instance of sanity amidst hallucinations fascinates me. The fact that Kesey used the work of the doctors in some small situation of rebellion or some victory interests me, and he reminds me in a way of McMurphy or Chief, but probably more like Chief in his times of quiet rebellion. It is also interesting that he calls the doctor Dr. Fog, which could be a reflection of his drugged state, but which reminds me of the presence of fog on the ward. This quote may be only a small part of the excerpt, but to me it reflects much more. It's an example of Kesey outsmarting those who run society, even on LSD, and making the experimenters no longer in charge. This is what he continues to do after the experiment is over and the attempt which he shows in the novel. Anna talked about the lines between insanity and sanity, and I think this situation blurs that line even more because of the ability to ground oneself even while on a drug like LSD.
1st quote pg. 41
DeleteSTYLE:
ReplyDelete"The ceiling is moving- not in a crazed swirl but along its own planes its own planes of light and shadow and surface not nearly so nice and smooth as plasterer Super Plaster Man intended with infallible carpenter level bubble sliding in dim honey Karo syrup tube not so foolproof as you thought, bub, little lumps and ridges up there, bub, and lines, lines like spines on crests of waves of white desert movie sand…" (40).
The sentence structure, as Anna said, makes no sense. The author jumps from one idea to another and then connects back to the original idea, but still makes no sense. It may be so hard to understand what this means because I have never been on LSD, but this reminds me of our discussion in class on metaphors and how metaphors relate to insanity. If someone really sees things as metaphors, are they crazy? Chief does this often, and we really can't know, but here, we see how LSD sort of merges reality and metaphors. This is really happening in the persons mind, but to us, it isn't real. This is similar to insanity. I wonder though, how any person could pull out of this as Kesey does in the second quote for content. Maybe that's why it's so hard for us to understand this situation: it goes in and out and an outside observer cannot understand.
Miles… Faces… so many faces rolling up behind the eyelids, faces he has never seen before, complete with spectral cheekbones, pregnant eyes, stringy wattles, and all of a sudden: Chief Broom," (47).
It makes sense that the start of this book would involve drugs. Drugs like these are a sort of partial insanity and show the confusion of insanity, as shown in the repetition of the words in this quote. When I read sentences like these, I go back to thinking about control and self-control. People who took these drugs didn't seem to have much self-control while on them, but it didn't seem to matter if they did or didn't, because, as we see, extraordinary things happened when they were on them, and they didn't want control. I wonder if anyone who is insane has this feeling of releasing control and opening up themselves to new ideas, because, like Anna said, Kesey had incredible ideas while on drugs like LSD. Do people not want control so that they can have ideas like this? We talked about insanity as a choice, so is this why people make this choice?
CONTENT:
ReplyDelete"But the doctors were so out of it. They never took LSD themselves and they had absolutely no comprehension, and it couldn't be put into words anyway"
The doctors study the reactions that the volunteers have to LSD, but they aren't able to get an accurate study because they cannot possibly understand the mental experience involved. To them, they get the health readings and the impaired motor skills and sense of time and reality, but they cannot see or feel what the volunteers see or feel. This is a lot like insanity, particularly for Chief Broom, where the staff just think he's deaf and dumb with nothing going in inside his mind, but his schizophrenia causes his mind to run a lot more than his outer self does. Chief is completely alive on the inside, but to the outside world he is dead.
"He could truly see into people for the first time"
While on LSD he's able to pick up on the small details of people, and thus see who they really are. Not so much who they really are, but from a different point of view. While tripping on LSD, he picks up and hyperfocuses on small details, such as the ceiling, where an entire world separate from his own exists where normally nothing would exist at all. This sense of understanding comes from his separation from reality, just like insanity is a separation from the "normal" reality and falling into a reality that exists exclusively in his mind.
STYLE:
ReplyDelete"Lovell is under LSD in the clinic and he starts drawing a huge Buddha on the wall"
The LSD is, as Tom Wolf wrote, an unlock of the human mind and thus an access to creativity. This creative side also shows how Lovell escaped from reality and into his mind, completely absorbed in his work as he filled a whole wall with his drawing. The interaction between Lovell and the White Smock is much like the interaction between the Nurse Ratched and Pete, where he tries to express something simple, in Lovell's case asking for an opinion on his drawing and Pete telling Nurse that he's tired. In both cases, these are very important questions to them, but for the outside world, Nurse Ratched and the White Smock, these statements mean very little.
"Kesley was soaring on LSD and his sense of time was wasted, and thousands of thoughts per second were parring around between synapses, fractions of a second, so what the hell was a minute..."
On LSD and other psycadelics, the sense of time is completely lost, seconds feel like hours, but minutes feel like no time at all. Kesleys sense of time was lost, his only way to beat the system was through counting his pulse, making him probably different from the other volunteers result-wise because he was able to keep time. This reminds me of Chief Broom, who tricks the staff into thinking he's deaf and dumb by not speaking or responding to noises. They both do this for a sense of being different, for feeling like they beat the system somehow. This fall back into reality feels signifigant because while under the control of the LSD, which leaves him almost completely disconected from reality, he is still able to come back for one minute to trick the system.Regardless, they are both impaired, through LSD and mental disease, and I can see where this particular event could be an influence for the novel and Broom's character.
CONTENT
ReplyDelete"...having them try to solve simple problems in logic and mathematics...but the doctors were so out of it. They never took LSD themselves and they had absolutely no comprehension, and it couldn't be put into words anyway."
This quote resembles the novel we are reading very closely. The doctors obviously are parallel to the administrators in the asylum, while the test subjects would be the "insane" people within the asylum. The doctors are all asking questions about math and logic, which is futile because they are the most unimportant questions when trying to make sense of the experience of an LSD user. Insane people are ostracized because they are "crazy." Normal people are like the doctors, weighing whether or not the people are "crazy" by checking if they can or cannot do certain things. These things that normal people use to weigh whether or not these people are "crazy" are incorrect. People like McMurphy understand that these questions that "normal" people ask others to guess if they are crazy are irrelevant questions, just like LSD users understand that the questions doctors ask to comprehend LSD users are irrelevant questions. Robert Hamlin Livaudais says that it's easy to forget that the LSD users are test subjects being examined by the doctors. I say that this may be the case because for the LSD users to be test subjects and doctors to be the experimenters, we feel that the doctors are the ones who are the more intelligent ones, the ones who are seeking out the answers, and are overall, above the test-monkeys. However, we find that the test-monkeys are actually the ones that hold the truth about the experiment's results, that the doctors are being unproductive through their questioning, which causes them to have results irrelevant to the task the experiment tries to accomplish.
"...to make us all down here look up and see nothing but ceiling, because we all know ceiling, because it has a name, ceiling, therefore it is nothing but a ceiling-no room for."
The fact that ceiling is given the name, (ceiling) is put in a tone of distaste in this specific quote. The ceiling's name gives it limited description, so that whenever someone says "ceiling," there is no room for anything other than what the single meaning the word gives. This can relate to insanity, because the people who are deemed insane are forced to look at themselves as what they are: "insane." There is no room for anything but what the word implies on its own. This causes the people to view themselves in what the word limits them to view themselves as. However, it seems this doesn't affect McMurphy..yet..
CONTENT:
ReplyDelete"as if for the first time he has entered a moment in his life and known exactly what is happening to his senses" (41). This quote reminds me of the passages about Pete. Whenever Pete tries to tell the other patients how he's feeling, like how tired he is, they all blow him off except for that one time where he actually looked like he knew what was going on. He came out of his normal trance and expressed his feelings just like the men did when they were on LSD. The only difference is that the men on drugs have to drug themselves to go into the fog whereas Pete and the other patients are continuously in the fog and it takes those special moments for them to snap out of it.
"but he more than sees the tremor, he understands it, he can...see each muscle fiber decussate...and the fibers one by one leading back into infrared caverns of the body" (41-42). This quote reminds me of how Chief Broom always describes all of the wires and strings coming from different people and places controlling the ward. In many instances Chief Broom credits all of the wires in controlling the people and things around him, just how these fibers control the man's face. The wires and Fibers are both extensions that don't really exist, representing an unrealistic scapegoat for what is going on around the ward. Chief Broom can blame these wires for controlling him without directly blaming the nurse and upsetting order in the ward.
STYLE:
ReplyDelete"his sense of time was wasted, and thousands of thoughts per second were rapping around between synapses, fractions of a second, so what the hell is a minute" (43). The distorted sense of time explains the unorganized writing of both the piece and the novel. Also towards the end of what we read last weak, Chief Broom goes off on a rant about how the Big Nurse can control all time and change the clocks whenever she wants, making certain days go faster and certain others go slower. The Big Nurse makes time faster and slower so it is painful for the patients, just like LSD makes it hard for the volunteers to generate simple things like the length of a minute.
"The clinicians fantasy was that the volunteers were laboratory animals that had to be dealt with objectively, quantitatively. It was well known that the people who volunteered for drug experiments tended to be unstable anyway" (42).
This reminds me of the conversation about that rabbits that the patients have and also of how McMurphy voluntarily joins the psychiatric ward. Doesn't this prove that he is in an esence crazy, just like the men volunteering for drug testing makes them crazy? This also explains the power positions of the doctors and the volunteers (or patients) in both the novel and the piece which determines how the two works are written.
STYLE:
ReplyDelete"like an orgasm behind the eyeballs, and his A-rabs - A-rabs behind the eyelids, eyelid movies, room for them and a lot more in the five billion thoughts per second stroboscope synapses"
"Little lumps and ridges up there, bub, and lines, lines like spines on crests of waves of white desert movie sand"
Both quotes show a similar style. The style seems very ambiguous in my opinion so what I pull from it may not necessarily be what the author intended the style to be perceived as. I see in both quotes, that one word is said, then a pause is given, and then the word is repeated again. It seems to me that something very unusual is uttered, like the eyeball orgasm, and the lumps and ridges. This conveys a message to us that the people are just crazy and spewing words as a result of their affected mental state. However, the pause indicates that there is thought being put into the description, and cues for us, the reader, to take the descriptions more seriously, as the quotes continue with their description, with us giving the descriptions more value. This reminds me of the insane people in the book, as what they say is usually given little to no validity, and are in general perceived as vapid, and void of importance. The book goes to great lengths to convey that their actions and feelings are more than what they are perceived in the society of the book. Again sir Robert Hamlin Livaudais provides insight into the style, saying that things are described in an unorganized manner. I agree that this is going on, and in addition to that, there are parts in the reading that urges us to see that while things are described confusingly and in an unorganized way, there is much importance to pull, such that is not pulled by the doctors.
CONTENT:
ReplyDelete"He could see clear into them. And-how could you tell anybody about this? they'll say you’re a nut yourself- but afterwards, not high on anything, he could still see into people." (48)
The theme in this one is reaching a deeper understanding, and therefore a connection with others by taking various drugs. The reason is because they are now seeing things, in this circumstance, how people considered insane see things. They can see the things that cannot be described in words but through experience alone and because of that the people on LSD can better understand the minds of insane people. But it is not just that. They can also understand people as a whole because of the new perspective on how they see things the drug provides. Things seem to be black and white and flat, but when someone takes the drug, then the world becomes colorful and distorted compared to how we are all used to seeing it normally. This color and distortion allows a person to become enlightened, and this enlightenment will last even after the high has worn off because of the indescribable memories of what someone saw while they were on LSD. This is a contrast to what Chloe was saying in how the doctors can not truly connect with the patients because they do not understand them, and do not know what they are going through. This is like with Chief how he feels he can understand McMurphy and the other patients, but the doctors do not understand him or the others because they do not know what they are going through inside of their minds. Chief does, or he can guess because he spends all of his time watching the others and observing them.
"It was even before Dr. Humphry Osmand had invented the term 'psychodelic,' which was later amended to 'psychedelic' to get rid of the nuthouse connotation of 'pyscho'." (44)
Another theme is the how these drugs can let you relate to crazy people without making you one. The reason the name was changed was so people would stop saying or thinking that the drugs made you crazy. This stems off of a larger theme of what is and isn’t acceptable in society. Since LSD is not widely known and the effects are not being accurately tested, then it is seen as more accepted, whereas since crazy people are seen as potentially dangerous to society, then they are not seen as acceptable and is why they are shipped off to hospitals, sometimes for good. (Hence the reason to change “psycho ”to“ psyche and why the characters of Cuckoo’s Nest cannot leave- they are still seen as not perfectly functioning and anything less is unacceptable) The writer also says how he left to go to Texas where psychedelic drugs are more accepted. For the most part the starting to become seen as not acceptable, but he leaves for one of the last few safe havens where these psychedelic drugs are accepted.
Content
ReplyDelete"And - how could you tell anybody about this? they'll say you're a nut yourself - but afterwards, not high anything, he could still see into people."
"But the doctors were so out of it. They never took LSD themselves and they had absolutely no comprehension, and it couldn't be put into words anyway."
Both of these quotes discuss the drastic difference between how the doctors and the patients perceive information. These quotes are very similar to the conflict in the novel about who will be the bull goose looney in the ward. We discussed in class Friday how "sane" and "insane" people have different perceptions about what is important. As His Majesty Fahrawn Jsomething Gill dictates to us, the "normal" people cut out the "insane" from society by giving them tests which they end up failing, but how can they be given these tests when what they perceive as being important is so drastically different from what the "normal" people see? This asks probably the most important question of the novel, which has to do with whether insanity should be an objective set of qualities or whether everyone is somewhat insane. But then, would anybody call themselves insane if it was a subjective idea? I do not currently have the intellectual capability to ponder this ponderance, but the important idea out of this is that it is very difficult to see another person's point of view without experiencing it for yourself, and one of the major themes in both the novel and the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is seeing a situation from multiple perspectives.
CONTENT:
ReplyDelete“all around him and suddenly he was in a realm of consciousness he had never dream of before and it was not a dream or a delirium but part of his awareness” (40)
One of the most prominent themes in this reading is the idea of a change in the perception of reality of the people taking LSD, which is also something that we tie to insanity in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s nest. LSD messes with how we see reality, and those people who don’t see the way that the majority of people see their surroundings can be considered insane. Also, in Cuckoo’s nest, all the inmates are given pills, but not told what’s in it, obviously it’s something that may not be good for them, perhaps it’s something that helps them be less aware of their surroundings, or maybe it’s just LSD to help keep them insane and locked up in the institution where Big Nurse can exercise her power over them. This ties in to how Robert said that the LSD affects their ability to be aware of their surroundings.
“The clinicians fantasy was that the volunteers were laboratory animals that had to be dealt with objectively, quanititatively” (42)
Another one of the themes is the idea that the people under the experiments are nothing more than lab rats. This theme is similar to the idea of skewed reality, as the clinicians don’t see the LSD patients as humans but as animals. The theme of animals applies to Cuckoo’s nest as well, as the staff of the institution think that Chief is just a deaf and dumb beast and set him to work doing menial labor, instead of treating him as a real human being.
STYLE:
ReplyDeleteThe style of the piece is trying to create a feeling of a different world. One of the most prominent examples of this is at the end when the words “Miles” and “Faces” are just repeated over and over again one its own line and different amount of indention. This is strange and is a different way of looking at the text, similar to how insane people are those who don’t see the same reality as ‘normal people’. Another example is a strange there where it suddenly switches to first person in the second paragraph of page 46, showing another strange style switch. In the novel, one of the stranger things that happens are all the pictures that appear throughout the novel, with out of proportion limbs and other body parts, as most novels don’t try to put pictures in and if they do they are usually trying to be as accurate as possible, but many of the pictures look as though the artist was on LSD, similar to how in the piece Lovell was on LSD and started
STYLE:
ReplyDeleteHow this piece is written is a bit confusing and the similes and metaphors are so crazy sounding that it seems that the person who is writing either has to be crazy, or on drugs. It fits because it is about the writer's experiences on LSD, so it gives the reader a better insight into what it was like for him. An example of this is when the write says, "Along its own planes its own planes of light and shadow and surface not nearly so nice and smooth as plasterer Super Plaster Man intended with infallible carpenter level bubble sliding in dim honey Karo syrup tube not so foolproof as you thought, bub," (40). It is very confusing and does not make much sense because they just throw names in there without even really saying who it is and adding stuff to it that does not seem relevant, and also repeating small parts of phrases. It is extremely confusing to the point where it makes no sense what so ever, therefore giving us an idea as to what it was really like for the writer on LSD. Robert also saw this and described it in his post. Something that is similar between this and the Cuckoo's Nest is that not only do the doctors not care about the patients, but the writers dehumanize these types of characters, whether it is a doctor, orderly, or type of patient, etc., by giving special nicknames to the groups that only somewhat relate to their actual profession or life and group all the people of the same profession or life together. (ex. "White Smocks" is this reading and "black boys" in Cuckoo's Nest).
Style
ReplyDelete"I am Doctor, this is a human specimen before me - the poor ninny has his own desert movie going on inside, only each horsehair A-rab is a threat - if only his lip, his face, would stay level, level like the honey bubble of the Official Plaster. Man assured him it would - Miraculous! He could truly see into people for the first time - And yes, that little capsule sliding blissly down the gullet was LSD."
The main style of this excerpt is switching points of view so quickly that the reader really has to pay attention to tell which point of view is being expressed. This is similar to in Steppenwolf, where Hesse continuously tells us that the mind is made up of many different souls that are all linked together. These souls are at times impossible to distinguish from one another, just as the many points of view in this excerpt and the different personalities that Chief shows in the novel are often barely distinguishable when a crossover occurs.
"Yeah he had that. Kesey was soaring on LSD and his sense of time was wasted, and thousands of thoughts per second were rapping around between synapses, fractions of a second, so what the hell is a minute - but then one thought stuck in there, held... ma-li-cious, de-li-cious."
Similarly, Madam Crake discusses how the passage of time is drastically slowed when one takes LSD. With this time drastically slowing down, should the person on LSD be able to see all of their personalities? The excerpt shows how LSD allows one to see one's many different personalities distinctly from a third person, rather than a first person, view.
CONTENT:
ReplyDelete"The doctor comes back in, and marvelous, poor tight cone ass, doc, Kesey can now see into him... he he more than sees the tremor, he understnads it..." (41)
This quote reminds me a lot of how Chief Broom can see into the Big Nurse like nobody else can. He can tell her every move of her inner machine and emotions. The doctors might call this crazy considering he is on no drugs that enable him to see psychedelic things, but in the book CHief seems more intelligent and reserved than crazy. But then again isn't that a type of craziness, selusion? And if the author wanted to show himself as Chief in the novel being on LSD then it would make sense. So the question still remains is Chief crazy? And there is no definite answer yet, but we do know that he fakes certain things and is able to conrol himself and his emotions, so he seems pretty sane to me. However, do the drugs that Kesey takes make him insane? Or are they simply a healthy way for him to access his true conscious? If it is part of his true conscious then why does he have to inject his body with foreign substances to be able to access it? This quote kind of makes me think that Chief might be more crazy though.
"--If only his lip, his face, would stay level, level like the honey bubble of the Official PLaster Man assured him it would" (42)
I'm not completely sure what the Plaster Man is, but this quote reminds me of the Big Nurse being unproportional, revealing her true insecurities. He also uses a similie here which he does a lot in the novel and makes the readers view Chief as sane because it is more realistic and reasonable to stay object A is like object B rather than object A is object B, which would just make him sound crazy. Maybe they author put part of himself in the Big Nurse as well, his incsicurities. If the PLaster Man is realism then everything should be balanced. That's how society and the doctors want you to see things, but there is so much more under the surface that Kesey is now able to see- the flaws in society.
STYLE:
ReplyDelete"no room for A-rabs up there in Level Land,eh Plaster Man. Suddenly he is like a ping-pong ball in a flood of sensory stimuli, heart beating, blood coursing, breath suspiring, teeth grating, hand moving over the percale sheet over those thousands of minute warfy woofings like a brush fire"
"the first thing he knew about it was a squirrel dropped an acorn from a tree outside, only it was tremendously loud and sounded like it was not outside but right in the room with him and not actually a sound, either"
The style of these quotes, to me, is seemingly insane, the use of figurative language blurs the lines between fantasy and reality and causes the reader to question their own sanity in order to understand if the author's perspective is a true representation of events, or hyperbole. Like Holly said, "this piece is written is a bit confusing and the similes and metaphors are so crazy sounding that it seems that the person who is writing either has to be crazy, or on drugs. It fits because it is about the writer's experiences on LSD, so it gives the reader a better insight into what it was like for him." Animal-like references relate back to human nature and show how LSD can have certain implications on revealing this side of people. Further, a descriptive sensory imagery provides insight into Kesey's insane experiences and help suspend the reader's disbelief in order to connect them to how the insane view things differently. All of this is parallel to "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" in that Chief is also insane and perceives reality in a way that seems completely different and insane to me through the use of figurative language as well.
CONTENT:
ReplyDelete"Kesey was soaring on LSD and his sense of time was wasted, and thousands of thoughts per second were rapping around between synapses, fractions of a second, so what the hell is a minute-but then one thought stuck in there, held malicious, delicious"
"But the doctors were so out of it. They never took LSD themselves and they had absolutely no comprehension, and it couldn't be put into words anyway."
In my opinion, these two quotes highlight two important themes from this excerpt. The first of these themes is the change in perception that coems from taking to LCD that allows those that take the drug to "see more" while experiencing their high. Also, by saying that a "sense of time is wasted," the author shows how taking the drug separates people from reality in that they transcend realistic limitations, such as time, and live through experience alone. While taking LSD, one feels as if they are stuck in one continuous moment where everyday life is forgotten, and boundaries set on thinking and imagination are nonexistent. The second theme found within these two quotes is anyone not taking LSD, especially the doctor's, inability to understand what those under the influence of the drug are going through. I relate this to insanity in that people who are sane also can never truly understand what the insane experience on a regular basis. The reason for this is a complete alteration in perception; if sane people or those not taking LSD could see things from the same perspective as those that are insane and taking the drugs without actually having to be insane or ingesting the drugs, then they could understand. It's not the labels of being high or insane that constitute this line of thinking; in fact, these labels alone mean nothing at all. It is only the ability to see more "color," reverse the training that society imposes on us from a young age, and transcend societal limitations and allow those that are insane or under insane to access this enlightenment that is seemingly unattainable to anyone that does not fall under these two groups of people