Narration!

Throughout out reading so far in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, I have constantly been bothered by the perspective of the narrator.  We discussed numerous times in class how he is not a reliable source of information, and this made me have some real issues with the book- I figured if we couldn’t trust him, we couldn’t trust the plot line whatsoever.  However, after further discussion, I began thinking- how much can we really trust any narrator’s perspective?  Every narrator, no matter how partial they may seem, has a bias.  Even in our nonfiction novels last year, we could not fully trust the word of the author.  I just hadn’t realized how much this bothered me until we were met with a narrator so obviously impaired.  This idea made me have a change of heart, and think more deeply about perspective.  Maybe we don’t read these stories solely for the validity of the plotline- the way the events affect the narrator have equal importance.  So even though we may not be able to accept everything Chief Broom says as totally true, we can use this as a prompt for further analysis and see how the events of the novel change him.  This realization gave me a new acceptance for narrators with more imperfect perspectives and provides room to see the novel on a new level.