Tip Toeing Around Sanity

Thoughts on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, What is it like to be crazy? Many have probably wondered. What must it feel like? Is it any different than what I'm feeling right now? What changes? and Does anything really change at all? Do insane people even notice that they've gone mad? Could it be that the realization of their imminent madness could have caused them the latter?

At first I didn't really pay much attention to things in the book, I wasn't looking for something, there was not anything that I was focusing on as reader yet. Then I noticed the "fog". Immediately I became skeptical of what the main character, Chief Bromden was telling us. At first I didn't really know what to think of this "fog" and assumed it had something to do with their medication. Yet somehow that didn't quite fit. It could be a technique used by the people in wards to control the patients or maybe its just supposed to be that way and nothing weird is happening.

Then again before going ballistic and go insane from over thinking details and actions in the book, its probably wise to step back and appreciate the big picture. By criticizing society the "fog" could be interpreted as something even greater! Right now from what we've seen the "fog" is just the heaviness of a clouded mind, uncertainty, sluggishness, or maybe and quite possibly, madness itself.

Film or Paper?

Generally in the world, when a great book is published it will almost always be turned into a film. Some novels are great for turning into films, books such as Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings. Yet in my opinion, a book like Waiting for Godot is better left on paper. When you watch a movie a certain point of view is forced upon you, the directors point of view, which cuts you of from the way you thought it might be or the things you felt whilst reading it. But maybe it was supposed to happen, perhaps this was supposed to become a movie because ultimately Becket wrote it in play form. Even so whether you read or watch it, there is space open for interpretation since in the end there are thousands of people each with different points of view and opinions.

Every single person is different they all have different ways of seeing feeling and relating to things. What each of us feels is unique, so how do we know that what we are feeling is truly ours? Or could it be something that the director is telling us to feel?

For example, with the film Vladimir and Estragon talked relatively fast when they're talking. Whereas when reading the book I found it was rather slow, a montone doning on and on. With a tired run down voice tone, yet what I found in the film was that they we're sort of animated they responded each other as soon as one of them said something there weren't really any pauses in between the talking of one or the other. Another thing that was really different to me when comparing the book and the film was Lucky's speech. In the novel I had imagined him as a weathered, balding man with no coherence. Yet in the film he is younger than what I could have ever imagined with long hair and a voice filled with passion when he gave his speech.

Still my opinion could be completely different compared to someone else's, another person could have imagined Lucky just as the director imagined him... who knows? 

  

Circles

Quite honestly, after reading Waiting for Godot I felt this book was a complete, tiring, and utter waste of time. Nothing happens in this book, nothing that has anything relevant to offer us, other than maybe getting depressed and the desire to burn said book. I felt a certain anger towards the characters for their inaction, which is something that unnerves me. You were given a life it might be meaningless to everyone around you but might as well do something with it.

"Vladimir: Well? What do we do?
  Estragon: Don't let's do anything. It's safer
  Vladimir: Let's wait and see what he says.
  Estragon: Who?" (pg.13)

Vladimir and Estragon end up convincing themselves that they should wait for Godots counsel on whether or not they should kill themselves. This is just too much they can't even make the decision of taking their own lives. It came to my mind that this is probably what people are like in their everyday lives, not necessarily suicidal but simply monotonous and boring. Maybe Estragon and Vladimir just represent who we really  are when we're  desperate for something in life to save us from our routines. If you really think of it our lives are simply long and intricate patterns, intricate but patterns none the less taking us back and forth.

Ouroboros

I was listening to a song that I found fitting with the play called Same Mistakes by One Direction, Styles sings "Circles, we're going in circles dizzy is all it makes us we know where it takes us we've been before". Is this not what Estragon and Vladimir are doing? Never really moving forward? Just like  us, stuck in our own monotony. Making fun of the human need to incessantly find meaning in everything that surrounds us. Waiting for something or someone that may never come, it really begs the question; is it really worth waiting for? 

We Are Alone

''We live alone, we die alone, everything else is just an illusion"

I heard this quote once and thought, then why are we here? What's our purpose? We all die alone.. so why are we condemned to spend our lives working, struggling for an illusion? Seeing as no matter the amount of friends, or the time invested in a project will help us change our fate, dying alone, aren't there better things to do with our time?


I was forced to ask myself these questions at the time and now again when reading a book called The Stranger. Asking ourselves what we really think about life and how we perceive and take part in it. Through a quite simple character who seems quite complex in the eyes of society we are exposed to existentialism. All of us lead the lives we do because of what we've been taught, very rarely does one stop and think about their lives and inner happiness. There are so many important things to think about that sometimes things like homework, or even your job seems meaningless. What are we working towards?


Mersault was a man with a calm demeanor who lead a calm life to anyone that did not know him it must have looked like any other person. His life style was quite the extraordinary thing, just acting on things because his simple thought was quite simply, why not? He focused on only the present and had no worries nor thoughts of the future. He already knew what awaited him, dying alone, so what if he did kill that man it really made no difference. Mersault also thought that even if he did die nothing changed, you would eventually be forgotten (that is if you're remembered at all) and life will go on without incident.


Life and what you do really has no meaning, but it is absolutely crucial that you do it. We are alone, yet we still live, and still do the things we do in our day to day because at the end of it all what matters most is what you did with your time and what it meant to you, above anyone else.