Wait the End of the Book Already?

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Or

The Namesake

As the class approaches the end of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest a distinctive difference emerged compared to our last book. As The Namesake drew to a close I felt like a sense of relief came as we welcomed the end of listening to Gogol creating issues centered around his name and his perception of his name. This opposes the general feeling I get as the confrontation on the ward comes to a close. This time I get the impression that the topic still holds much interest and attention compared to poor Gogol and his name. But why the difference? Do we feel a stronger connection with the insane characters in the mental hospital then we did with Gogol and his struggles? Or do we want McMurphy or one of the other patients to do something crazy that will entertain us. I personally feel that it falls more under the second category, that we keep waiting for the characters in the book to do something so extreme and crazy that it proves they need to be in the mental hospital. With Gogol's character we simply expected him to behave like a rational, normal, every day human being and as such did not expect any unpredictability out of him to keep our attention to the end. To contrast this, expecting the supposedly mentally insane to do something irrational and interesting seems to be a completely reasonable expectation. This difference between the two books holds the key to the difference between the attitudes at the end of the respective books. In one book the character almost becomes to easy to relate to, he becomes someone we could meet at any time, in the other the characters should be unpredictable and erratic which holds our attention. This difference reflects on how humans find those different then themselves more interesting then those like them.