Cuckoo and Crazy

“Vintery, Mintery, Cutery, Corn,” a children’s nursery rhyme written for a Mother Goose book, throws together a compilation of nonsense words juxtaposed with a probable hidden meaning regarding the concept of insanity. In the first line of the poem, the narrator articulates, “Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn” (1). This string of nonsense words could represent a variety of farfetched concepts and ideas. However, I believe that the list parallels the insanity within all of us, and the one normal word, corn, illustrates how infrequently in our society do we ever come across a sane and normal person. In the next line of the poem, the narrator muses, “Apple seed and apple thorn;” (2). The juxtaposition of seed and thorn illustrates the two spectrums of life and death, conveying the idea that insanity prospers over a person’s lifetime. As the poem progresses, the narrator states, “Three geese in a flock” (4). In this phrase, the word “flock” represents all people in their entirety, symbolizing the concept that everyone is insane. Finally, the narrator declares, “One flew east,/ And one flew west,/ And one flew over the cuckoo’s nest” (5-7). This final phrase can allude to a variety of deeper meanings, however, I believe that it illustrates how everyone has a little bit of insanity in them. Due to the fact that birds typically fly north to south or south to north, the uncharacteristic directions that these birds fly in my illustrate insanity. Nonetheless, I believe that the bird that flies over the cuckoo’s nest represents sane people because the cuckoo’s nest may be facing the opposite directions of the other birds, so either north or south. This conveys the idea that perhaps we are all crazy, but the craziest people of all are also the sanest. I believe that this idea may foreshadow the insanity of the people in the 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey.