One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest By: Ken Kesey

1. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s NestBy: Ken Kesey Analysis by Marie Pastorino

2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lpIkVsGeKc

3. About the Author • He is one of Oregon’s most critically acclaimed and controversial authors. • Born on September 17, 1935 in La Junta , Colorado • Attended University of Oregon’s School of Journalism in 1957 • Attended Stanford University’s creative writing program where he participated in U.S. Army experiments involving lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and mescalin. • These hallucinogenic experiences altered Kesey’s outlook on life and contributed to the inspiration behind his writing. • He published One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in 1962 as well as Sometimes a Great Notion in 1964. • Both novels revolved around the conflict between modern industrial society and individuality; the battle between conformity and freedom.

4. Kesey turned to psychedelic drugs to find personal liberation. • He is considered a founding father of the 1960s counterculture and promoted drug use as a path to individual freedom. • He founded a group known as the Merry Pranksters and in 1964 they traveled the country in a day-glo colored school bus named “Further”. • In 1965 Kesey was sentenced to jail for 6 months for his drug use. • When he was released he moved to a farm near Eugene to raise his family and published a loosely organized memoir of his experiences . • In 1975 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest became an Oscar winning film • He died on November 10, 2001.

5. Primary Characters • Randle McMurphy- The protagonist of the story. He is loud, boisterous, fun-loving, resilient and optimistic. He is the leader of all the patients in the insane asylum and becomes the Jesus figure of the story. He receives a lobotomy at the end of the novel that turns him into a vegetable. • Chief Bromden- He serves as the narrator of the story. For the most part he is just an observer and pretends to be deaf and dumb and therefor people talk freely around him enabling him to learn a lot of secrets. Chief and McMurphy are roommates and become good friends. Chief kills McMurphy when he receives the lobotomy. • Nurse Ratched- She is the antagonist. She desires order and craves power. Ratched oppresses the patients and subjects insubordinates to harsh punishment. She tries to put on a sexless façade and is in a constant dispute with McMurphy who ends up ruining her.

6. Dale Harding- The leader before McMurphy. He is the only well educated man on the ward and becomes McMurphy’s right hand man. He is a homosexual and is voluntarily in the mental hospital because he is afraid to face the world. • Billy Bibbit- Although Billy is 30 he is seen as the kid in this story. He is a shy man who fears everything and stutters constantly. He starts becoming more confident in the novel when he meets Candy, a whore who is friends with McMurphy. McMurphy sets the two up to have sex and upon Ratched discovering the act she makes him feel so guilty he commits suicide. • Doctor Spivey- The ward doctor who the Nurse bends to serve her will. He begins to rebel against Ratched when McMurphy arrives and helps them win a fishing trip. • Charles Cheswick- He is an acute and the first person to support McMurphy against Ratched. When McMurphy later doesn’t support Cheswick in his stand against Ratched he kills himself showing McMurphy how great an influence he has over the men.

7. Acutes- curable patients • Chronics- incurable patients • The Orderlies- Williams, Warren, Washington and Geever are like the nurses stooges. They bully and abuse the patients. • Candy Starr and Sandy- Two prostitute friends of McMurphy. Candy goes on the fishing trip with the men. They both sneak onto the ward with alcohol and Candy takes Billy’s virginity. • George Sorenson- A former fisherman , he leads the fishing trip after which Ratched forces the men to have a massive cleansing. He is deathly afraid of dirt and soap and protests the cleaning. McMurphy and Chief protect him by getting into a fight with the orderlies. Ratched punishes them with electroshock therapy making McMurphy a hero.

8. Summary • McMurphy come onto the ward optimistic and charismatic • McMurphyattends his first therapeutic meeting which he views as a “pecking party” because they emasculate the men and tear them down • In the second meeting McMurphy tries to petition for the men to vote to allow them to watch baseball at a time that they’re usually not allowed to watch tv. • The next meeting McMurphy brought the subject up again and tries to get the Chronics to raise their hands and Chief Bromden is the last vote that wins it for them. • Regardless of that Nurse Ratched doesn’t allow them to watch it. • All the people gather around the TV the next afternoon and watch the blank screen as though the baseball game was really on. • McMurphy finds out that most of the men on the ward were their voluntarily and he was one of the two Acutes committed to the ward. • In one of the meetings soon after McMurphys discovery Cheswick brings up the issue of being limited to one pack of cigarettes a day. McMurphy is silent and Cheswick is sent to disturbed for causing disruption.

9. Soon afterward McMurphy goes up to Nurse Ratched and smashes his hand through the window to get cigarettes off her desk while she is sitting in the office. • McMurphy starts planning a fishing trip with the men • The Chief finally speaks • After Chief Bromden tells McMurphy that he has turned into a small man McMurphy tells him that he will help regain his strength after the trip and convinces him to come along with them. • They go on the fishing trip and all of the men catch fish on their own and they are happy for once. • Billy Bibbit meets Candy a prostitute and begins to become more confident in himself. • McMurphy arranges for Candy to come see Billy and take his virginity.

10. Candy brings her friend Sandy as well as alcohol and the men have a wild night. • McMurphy plans to leave with Sandy in the morning to go to Mexico but he is never woken up and so his plan fails. • The next morning Nurse Ratched discovers the mess and finds Candy with Billy. • She makes Billy feel so guilty that he slices he kills himself by slicing his throat. • McMurphy becomes so mad at Nurse Ratched that he lunges ate her, exposes her breasts and tries to choke her. • McMurphy is given a lobotomy and comes back a vegetable. • Chief suffocates McMurphy with a pillow to allow him to die with dignity. • And the Chief breaks the wall down and gets out of the hospital, never to return.

11. Quotes • “If you don't watch it people will force you one way or the other, into doing what they think you should do, or into just being mule-stubborn and doing the opposite out of spite.” • “All I know is this: nobody's very big in the first place, and it looks to me like everybody spends their whole life tearing everybody else down.” • “He knows that you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy.”

12. “That ain't me, that ain't my face. It wasn't even me when I was trying to be that face. I wasn't even really me them; I was just being the way I looked, the way people wanted.” • “What do you think you are, for Chrissake, crazy or somethin'? Well you're not! You're not! You're no crazier than the average asshole out walkin' around on the streets and that's it. ”

13. Symbols • Fog- Symbolizes inaction against the Nurse and comfort • Pecking Party- symbolizes how the men tear each other down during Therapeutic Community meetings instead of helping each other • Rabbits- Harding says that the men are more like rabbits then chickens. They are weak and vulnerable and learn how to hide from the wolf (Nurse Ratched) rather than fight her. • Green seepage- Chief Bromden hallucinates green seepage covering the walls after a staff meeting. It is a symbol of their poisonous and treacherous minds. This reinforces the point that the asylum isn’t actually a place of healing but instead a place of torture. • The combine- a symbol that the Chief uses to describe the machine-like nature of the asylum as well as society in general.