The Stuff of Nightmares

      What haunts my dreams? AP English of course. On Tuesday night, my sleep was disturbed by a terrifying episode of AP English disasters. In my dream, Ms. Serenksy handed out new books; I was so distracted by this that I didn't notice her give instructions about our next journal assignment. Suddenly, everyone started writing and I had no idea what to do. To my horror, it turned out that everyone was preparing detailed discussion points, so not only was I left with an empty journal page, I also had nothing to contribute to the discussion. In my nightmares, I don't get chased by monsters, I lose discussion points. I realize I have become extremely focused on AP English, to the point that it has slipped into my dreams, which begs the question: what will this all mean when it ends in a matter of months? In my last post I stated that I have become more proficient at observation and deep analysis of the things I observe, ideally this will continue. However, free from the pressure of looming data sheets and graded discussions, I could easily slip out of my AP English mindset. I don't want this to happen, I can leave the psychotic obsession over discussion points behind in high school, but I want to continue to be a smart, observant person. To do this, I need to very deliberately continue to observe and analyze everyday life, because if I just passively wish to be smart and observant, then when I leave AP English behind, I will naturally drift away from the AP English thought paradigm.

Changed For the Better

      The other night I watched the movie "Millions" on TV. For anyone who hasn't seen it, it is a story about two British boys (Anthony-9 and Damian-7) and their father, their mother has just died and they have moved to a new house. Anthony seems to have his feet rooted very firmly in reality but Damian has hallucinations of various saints who help him work through the issues in his life. By chance, Damian ends up with a duffel bag full of stolen cash, which Anthony helps him manage. From the beginning, I saw Damian as a somewhat troubled boy struggling to cope with the death of his mother. In one scene Anthony very harshly echoes this sentiment by proclaiming that Damian "is a loony" and that he ought to be "locked up" because he has serious conversations with visions seen by no one but himself. Towards the end of the movie, Damian has a vision of his dead mother; she comforts him and reveals that although Anthony pretends to be fine, he is just as lost and grief-ridden as Damian. At this point I realized that while I had noticed that Damian might be a little bit crazy because of his hallucinations, I hadn't really thought that much about Anthony. Throughout the whole movie Anthony is obsessed with real estate investment, government taxes, and currency exchange rates. This behavior is just as unusual for a nine year old boy as hallucinations. Yet when I viewed the movie years ago (before AP English) I never looked very deeply at his character. This time around I found myself much more observant, I was able to see a deeper message about insanity and how it is judged. Anthony is just as crazy as Damian, but to the casual observer (myself before AP English) Damian comes across as the "loony" while Anthony just comes across as pragmatic beyond his years. As an AP English student (read "compulsive analyzer") I can see that my first judgment of the two brothers was superficial. I saw Damian as crazy because his behavior has no place in society, and Anthony as fairly normal because his behavior does have an acceptable place in society, just not in his age group. Perhaps not everyone thinks this way, but I think a lot of people must, because the same thing happens in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Some people are judged insane and locked up, while others (like the sadistic Nurse Ratched and her "black boys") are judged normal and allowed to preside over the insane when they are just as disturbed as them. Clearly, it is important to avoid superficial judgment and to look beyond the surface of a person's character. Luckily, AP English has strengthened my powers of observation and analysis and I can hopefully be more insightful in the future.



A Saint from one of Damian's visions

Damian and Anthony with the duffel bag of cash

Final Conclusions

      One of the central questions we discussed in class on Friday was whether the patient rebellion was worth it, and whether changing the lives of a few individuals really mattered, in view of the larger problems society as a whole faces. This is a rather difficult question to answer, but I have been thinking about it over the weekend so I wanted to give it a shot. Obviously McMurphy thought his cause was worthy, because he sacrificed his life for it, and I think I am on his side. McMurphy did not institute sweeping policy reforms which immediately bettered the lives of all mental patients, but one could hardly expect an ill-connected criminal committed to a mental ward to be able to do such a thing. When you consider who he was (a patient in a mental ward) it is amazing the amount of influence he was able to have. I think McMurphy did the most good that he was able to in his situation. When I look at it that way, I can't say that his efforts were not "worth it," a person's best cannot be unworthy. And then I have to consider the people McMurphy's rebellion affected. Although we don't find out many details, Bromden states that "just three of us were left out of the group that had been on the fishing trip" (321). It seems that the men closest to McMurphy were able to get out from under the thumb of Nurse Ratched and I like to think this means they have made a step towards dealing with their individual issues. If this is the case, then McMurphy succeeded where the Nurse failed, in actually helping the patients to change. What I take from this is that it is more effective to institute change from the bottom up than from the top down. Despite all the rules and restrictions the Nurse imposed from her position of power, she only ever succeeded in subduing the patients to the point where they still had problems, but the problems were not outwardly visible to the Public Relations tours. McMurphy, from the same level as the patients, taught them how to think independently and rebel, which brought a lot of problems to the surface and created a lot of chaos but ultimately, caused some genuine change and healing for the men. Unfortunately, not everyone experienced a positive outcome, as the Nurse points out Billy Bibbit and Charlie Cheswick both died in the course of the rebellion. So just considering whether McMurphy helped anyone (which I think he did) is skirting around the real issue: whether it is justifiable to hurt people in order to help others. This is a tricky question; can I really say that hurting people is ever justifiable? But can I say that the world would have been a better place without McMurphy's rebellion? My immediate answer to both questions is no, but it seems contradictory to answer both questions with no, so how can I reconcile these conflicting answers? The only loophole I can see is that in McMurphy's specific situation; he did not intend to hurt anyone. As far as I can tell, he did not plan on collateral damage, excepting the fact that he eventually realized he would have to sacrifice his own freedom. I could probably spend all night going in circles of logic and moralizing on this point but I'd rather get some sleep, so let's wrap it up. In McMurphy's case, I can forgive him for the loss of life because he did not intend for it to happen, or even foresee it. He unleashed chaos and maybe he should have seen the danger in that, but I think it is unfair to expect a human being to completely understand the complicated string of ramifications which result from their actions. He changed a number of lives for the better and I think that is worthwhile, a change for the better is always worth it, even if it is only a small and imperfect change.

What? Deviate?

      A recurring topic in our class discussions has been routines; whether they are necessary, whether we like them, and whether they help the patients. I am thinking about them right now because of my dog and his routines. My dog, Riley, has an annoying habit of whining about almost anything, at any time of day. His whining reaches a crescendo around dinner time as he loudly insists that it is not fair for us to eat a hot meal while he has dry kibble and that if we had any kind of compassion we would pull up a chair and let him help himself. At least that is what I think he is saying. We thought we could train him out of this behavior, by teaching him to quietly sit in his bed in return for a treat when we finished eating and cleaning the kitchen. Although Riley appreciates the treats, he does not feel that they alleviate the injustice of the situation and so he still whines. In fact, he whines even more than he used to because now he is so desperate to receive his treat that he works himself into a state of anxiety while he waits. Today we decided to weigh him to check if he is getting fat (turns out he gained a couple pounds) and I thought after dinner would be the perfect time. In my mind, removing him from the kitchen was a wonderful plan because it would take up some of the wait time that usually makes him so upset. However, Riley refused to leave the kitchen, I carried him up the stairs but as soon as I set him down he ran back down them. My dad then sent him back upstairs and I carried him to the scale. As soon as I finished weighing him he sprinted to the kitchen and made a beeline for his bed. This desperation to participate in a routine which seems to cause him stress initially surprised me, but after thinking about it for a while I realized it is not that unusual. Paradoxically, routines can simultaneously cause stress and provide comfort. They might restrict us or, as in Riley's case, create anxiety, but they are much less stressful than facing the unknown. Riley would rather wait in a state of apprehension than leave the kitchen and risk an unknown outcome to his evening. His reliance on routine helped me understand why so many patients on the ward would stay on even though they are not committed. As human beings, we fear unknown outcomes, and will often endure unpleasant routines to avoid them.

The Last Person I Expected to Relate With

In my last post I wondered what form the inevitable parallels between my life and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest would take, I even speculated that I might find a Nurse Ratched in my life. Well, I have realized that there is a Nurse Ratched in my life, and she is me. I have begun to see disturbing similarities between us, which is odd because I really don't think I'm the evil villain type. Of course, I don't think the similarities are really in areas of villainy, they are instead in the area of obsession with procedure. For example, in Kesey's novel Nurse Ratched maintains a rigid schedule for the patients; they are not allowed to break from it even to watch a baseball game. A reasonable person would have allowed the patients to make a one-time deviation and enjoy the game instead of turning it into an enormous power struggle with implications reaching beyond that afternoon. But Nurse Ratched is not a reasonable person, she has a very specific vision of how people should behave and what rules they should follow, she simply cannot tolerate interruptions to this vision and she overreacts when they occur. This is where I see myself in her, I have spent the last few days cycling between annoyance and rage because of a school project. The other people involved did not follow instructions and they had a very flippant attitude about the whole project. Somehow, my annoyance about this quickly escalated into a state of fury that occupied my thoughts for days; I talked about it constantly, which I am sure was very annoying to my friends. But yesterday evening I realized I was being ridiculous, I was fuming over procedural violations to a project which, clearly, no one really cares about except for me. Like Nurse Ratched, I cling to rules and procedures and I overreact when others do not take them as seriously as I do. Unlike Nurse Ratched, I would certainly not employ electroshock therapy to punish rule breakers, so the similarities end there. But I still need to be careful of this flaw because, as I demonstrated this week, it can cause me unnecessary stress and it makes me rather bad company.

 An image of Nurse Ratched from the 1975 film adaptation

Headed Off the Deep End?

Before we started these blogs, Ms. Serensky shared that she often finds a number of parallels between her own life and the events or ideas in the books we read. Since then, I have noticed some of these parallels occurring in my own life and I have read a number of blog entries by classmates who also see similarities between our assigned reading and their day to day lives. Generally this is just an interesting phenomenon that helps me relate more to the story or gives me a chance to apply lessons from the novel to reality. But now we are reading a story about an asylum for the insane, where most of the characters are mentally ill and the rest of them are taking advantage of that fact to violate their human rights. So as I thought about the reading, trying to come up with something to blog about, I had to ask the question, what implications does this have for my life in the following weeks? We all know our culture gets pretty involved in Christmas preparations, added to our already busy lives; the shopping, decorating, and wrapping can create a time crunch that puts us under extra stress. Will the holiday rush push me over the edge this year? I guess if Christmases #1 through 17 didn't do it then Christmas #18 probably won't, but I have to wonder where I am going to start finding parallels. Perhaps a Nurse Ratched will come into my life, that alone might be enough to push me off the deep end.