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1935-2001

KEN KESEY. 1935-2001. Early Years . He was born Kenneth Elton Kesey, September 17, 1935, in La Junta, CO , to Geneva and Fred Kesey. The family relocated to Oregon eleven years later, where Ken would spend the majority of his life.

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1935-2001

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  1. KEN KESEY 1935-2001

  2. Early Years • He was born Kenneth Elton Kesey, September 17, 1935, in La Junta, CO, to Geneva and Fred Kesey. • The family relocated to Oregon eleven years later, where Ken would spend the majority of his life. • Spent several years on his family's farm. He was raised in a religious household where he developed a great appreciation for Christian fables and a Christian ethical system. • Elected the boy most likely to succeed by his high school class. • Passionate about reading and films, Ken showed clear promise as a writer throughout his academic career. • While still at the University of Oregon, Ken eloped with his childhood sweetheart, Norma “Faye” Haxby, and they remained married for the rest of his life. • They had three children together: Jed, Zane, and Shannon. Ken also had another daughter, Sunshine, in 1966 with fellow Prankster, Carolyn “Mountain Girl” Adams.

  3. Adult Years • Kesey moved to California to attend the creative writing program at Stanford University. • Formed lifelong friendships—Robert Stone, Larry McMurty, Ken Babbs, and Wendell Berry(Who are actually characters in his book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) • Volunteered for experiments being conducted at the Menlo Park Veterans Hospital. Unknown to him at the time, these experiments where he was given psychoactive drugs, including LSD, were part of the CIA’s MKUltra project. • Ken “liberated” some of the LSD from the veterans hospital and shared it with friends. He also used his experiences working at the hospital as the inspiration for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

  4. Writings • Sometimes a Great Notion (1964) • Published Kesey's Garage Sale in 1973. His later works include Little Tricker the Squirrel Meets Big Double the Bear, a children's book (1990); Sailor Song (1992); and Last Go Around (1994), his last book, about a famous rodeo in Oregon. • One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest • Used many of his own life experiences • Characters, religion, volunteering, and the time period itself.

  5. Long Work: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest At a time when much of the US was focused on the Space Race, and exploring further and further away, Kesey saw psychoactives as tools for exploring inward, learning more about ourselves and others, and finding new ways to see the world already around us. In the context of the changing attitudes at the time, the novel in some sense forms a bridge between the bohemian beatnik movements of the 1950s and the counterculture movements of the 1960s. Kesey was significantly inspired by the beatnik culture around Stanford, and in the novel Kesey deals with a number of themes that would be significant in the counterculture movement, including notions of freedom from repressive authority and a more liberated view of sexuality. Kesey himself became a highly influential counterculture figure as part of a group known as the Merry Pranksters.

  6. Analysis of Long Work • Characters: • Chief Bromden • The narrator • Suffers from paranoia and hallucinations & has received multiple electroshock treatments • Randle McMurphy • Protagonist • Serves as the unlikely Christ figure in the novel—the dominant force challenging the establishment and the ultimate savior of the victimized patients. • Nurse Ratched • Antagonist • Weakens her patients through a psychologically manipulative program designed to destroy their self-esteem. • Characters represent different parts of society that Kesey thinks are often looked at as “crazy” • Dale Harding- married but homosexual. He has difficulty dealing with the overwhelming social prejudice against homosexuals, so he hides in the hospital voluntarily. • Billy Bibbit- voluntarily in the hospital, as he is afraid of the outside world. • Plot: Uses many experiences of his own life within the story. Takes place in a mental institution with multiple characters that are there voluntarily. McMurphy is the “outsider” who is one of the only individuals who are committed and cannot leave on their own, yet he sacrifices himself in order to get the other patients to willingly go back out into the world. In the end he is force to have a lobotomy and is now a vegetable, but it freed the others from the head nurse’s power.

  7. Short Works • An excerpt from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest • Point of view and Conflict • Poem (Folk Rhyme) “William Trimmytoes” • Allegory • Connection to the title of the book • This children's nursery rhyme is remembered by Chief Bromden after a shock treatment.

  8. Definitions • Excerpt: • Point of View • a particular attitude or way of considering a matter. • Paranoia • a mental condition characterized by delusions of persecution, unwarranted jealousy, or exaggerated self-importance, typically elaborated into an organized system. It may be an aspect of chronic personality disorder, of drug abuse, or of a serious condition such as schizophrenia in which the person loses touch with reality. • Conflict: • a literary element that involves a struggle between two opposing forces usually a protagonist and an antagonist. • Man vs. Self, Man vs. Man, and Man vs. society. • Poem • Allegory: • a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning

  9. Short Works Excerpt- Point of view example • Chief: • overhearing his private thoughts • patient in psychiatric ward • Suffers from paranoia • narrates the events of the novel • pretends to be deaf & dumb; he hears all the secrets on the ward and is barely noticed by anyone • The last line: • request that we have to keep an open mind. His hallucinations provide metaphorical insight into the hidden realities of the hospital and should not be overlooked simply because they did not actually happen. • Although over the course of the novel he regains his sanity, he witnesses many of the events while in a hallucinatory state; we have to trust in the truth of his perceptions, no matter what form they take.

  10. This poem is allegorical to the hospital in the following ways: • The “Cuckoo's Nest” is the hospital. • The "good fisherman" is the Big Nurse. She fishes in the patients and "catches hens, puts 'em in pens". This relates when McMurphy described the Group Meetings as a "pecking party", a term for when a flock of hens pecks one to death. She deliberately sets them against one another, rewarding this behavior. Examples

  11. Illustrations from the story • McMurphy is the goose that flies over the cuckoo's nest. In the beginning of the book, McMurphy describes himself as the "Bull Goose Loony" (21). • Bromden is the one that is plucked out of the cuckoo's nest by the “goose” (McMurphy) because at the end of the book he escapes into the real world thanks to McMurphy.

  12. People often thought of people with mental disorders as dysfunctional to society and viewed them as outcasts. • Kesey was more open to different areas of society and trying new things. • Kesey views women as the “hate” relationship which causes men’s problems. Love & Hate

  13. The Acid Tests and Further • LSD was becoming popular • Largely because of this, the awareness of LSD spread throughout American culture. • In 1963, Ken moved from Palo Alto to a house in the woods in La Honda, CA. The La Honda house became the “home base” for the Merry Pranksters, and the site of many Acid Tests. • Ken got called to New York on work related to the book. He and the Pranksters decided to go together and made it a mission to see the World’s Fair. • They purchased a 1939 International Harvester school bus, gave it the most psychedelic paint job the world had ever seen, and made the trip that would grow to become one of the most famous cultural journeys of modern times.

  14. Free slide • In 1965, Ken ran into legal trouble for marijuana possession, after his return to California. After faking suicide and running away to Mexico, he returned to the Bay Area to face the charges. He served a short time in jail, and “agreed" to publicly denounce LSD.

  15. Citations • http://furthurdowntheroad.org/index.php/history/ken-kesey/ • http://www.gradesaver.com/author/ken-kesey/ • http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/cuckoo/context.html • http://www.shmoop.com/one-flew-over-cuckoos-nest/epigraph.html • http://allisoneames.weebly.com/the-poem.html • http://www.blogs.sdlawu.edu • http://musicbanter.com • http://www.ohs.org/the-oregon-history-project/biographies/Ken-Kesey.cfm

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