Ken kesey was born in 1935 in
La Junta, Colorado. He grew up in Oregon and returned there to teach
until his death in November 2001. After being
elected the boy most likely to succeed by his high school class,
Kesey enrolled in the University of Oregon. He married in 1956,
a year before receiving his bachelor’s degree. Afterward, he won
a fellowship to a creative writing program at Stanford University.
While he was there, he became a volunteer in a program to test the
effects of new drugs at the local Veterans Administration hospital.
During this time, he discovered LSD and became interested in studying
alternative methods of perception. He soon took a job in a mental
institution, where he spoke extensively to the patients.
Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is
based largely on his experiences with mental patients. Through the
conflict between Nurse Ratched and Randle Patrick McMurphy, the
novel explores the themes of individuality and rebellion against
conformity, ideas that were widely discussed at a time when the
United States was committed to opposing communism and totalitarian
regimes around the world. However, Kesey’s approach, directing criticism
at American institutions themselves, was revolutionary in a way
that would find greater expression during the sixties. The novel,
published in 1962, was an immediate success.
With his newfound wealth, Kesey purchased a farm in California,
where he and his friends experimented heavily with LSD. He soon
became the focus of a growing drug cult. He believed that using
LSD to achieve altered states of mind could improve society. Kesey’s
high profile as an LSD guru in the midst of the public’s growing
hysteria against it and other drugs attracted the attention of legal authorities.
Kesey fled to Mexico after he was caught trying to flush some marijuana
down a toilet. When he returned to the United States, he was arrested
and sent to jail for several months.
In 1964, Kesey led a group of
friends called the Merry Pranksters on a road trip across the United
States in a bus named Furthur. The participants included Neil Cassady,
who had also participated in the 1950s version
of this trip with Jack Kerouac and company. The trip involved massive
consumption of LSD and numerous subversive adventures. The exploits
of the Merry Pranksters are detailed in Tom Wolfe’s The
Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. This book became a must-read
for the hippie generation, and much of the generation’s slang and
philosophy comes directly from its pages.
Dale Wasserman adapted One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s
Nest into a play version that ran on Broadway in 1963,
with Kirk Douglas in the leading role. In 1975,
a movie version was released without Kesey’s permission, directed
by Milos Forman. It was extremely successful, though quite different
from the novel. It was nominated for nine Academy Awards and swept
the five major categories. As a result, for many people familiar
with the film version, Randle McMurphy will forever be associated
with Jack Nicholson, the famous actor who portrayed him.
Chief Bromden, the half-Indian
narrator of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, has
been a patient in an Oregon psychiatric hospital for ten years.
His paranoia is evident from the first lines of the book, and he
suffers from hallucinations and delusions. Bromden’s worldview is
dominated by his fear of what he calls the Combine, a huge conglomeration
that controls society and forces people into conformity. Bromden
pretends to be deaf and dumb and tries to go unnoticed, even though
he is six feet seven inches tall.
The mental patients, all male, are divided into Acutes,
who can be cured, and Chronics, who cannot be cured. They are ruled
by Nurse Ratched, a former army nurse who runs the ward with harsh, mechanical
precision. During daily Group Meetings, she encourages the Acutes
to attack each other in their most vulnerable places, shaming them
into submission. If a patient rebels, he is sent to receive electroshock
treatments and sometimes a lobotomy, even though both practices
have fallen out of favor with the medical community.
When Randle McMurphy arrives as a transfer from the Pendleton
Work Farm, Bromden senses that something is different about him.
McMurphy swaggers into the ward and introduces himself as a gambling
man with a zest for women and cards. After McMurphy experiences
his first Group Meeting, he tells the patients that Nurse Ratched
is a ball-cutter. The other patients tell him that there is no defying
her, because in their eyes she is an all-powerful force. McMurphy
makes a bet that he can make Ratched lose her temper within a week.
At first, the confrontations between Ratched and McMurphy provide
entertainment for the other patients. McMurphy’s insubordination,
however, soon stimulates the rest of them into rebellion. The success
of his bet hinges on a failed vote to change the television schedule
to show the World Series, which is on during the time allotted for
cleaning chores. McMurphy stages a protest by sitting in front of
the blank television instead of doing his work, and one by one the
other patients join him. Nurse Ratched loses control and screams
at them. Bromden observes that an outsider would think all of them
were crazy, including the nurse.
In Part II, McMurphy, flush with victory, taunts Nurse
Ratched and the staff with abandon. Everyone expects him to get
sent to the Disturbed ward, but Nurse Ratched keeps him in the regular
ward, thinking the patients will soon see that he is just as cowardly
as everyone else. McMurphy eventually learns that involuntarily
committed patients are stuck in the hospital until the staff decides
they are cured. When McMurphy realizes that he is at Nurse Ratched’s mercy,
he begins to submit to her authority. By this time, however, he
has unintentionally become the leader for the other patients, and they
are confused when he stops standing up for them. Cheswick, dismayed
when McMurphy fails to join him in a stand against Nurse Ratched,
drowns in the pool in a possible suicide.
Cheswick’s death signals to McMurphy that he has unwittingly taken
on the responsibility of rehabilitating the other patients. He also
witnesses the harsh reality of electroshock therapy and becomes
genuinely frightened by the power wielded by the staff. The weight
of his obligation to the other patients and his fear for his own
life begins to wear down his strength and his sanity. Nevertheless,
in Part III, McMurphy arranges a fishing trip for himself and ten
other patients. He shows them how to defuse the hostility of the outside
world and enables them to feel powerful and masculine as they catch
large fish without his help. He also arranges for Billy Bibbit to
lose his virginity later in the novel, by making a date between Billy
and Candy Starr, a prostitute from Portland.
Back on the ward in Part IV, McMurphy reignites the rebellion by
getting into a fistfight with the aides to defend George Sorenson. Bromden
joins in, and they are both sent to the Disturbed ward for electroshock
therapy. McMurphy acts as if the shock treatments do not af. . .
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