Ken Kesey
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
His Life
 Born in 1935
 Raised on farms in Colorado and Oregon (Pacific
Northwest and connection to nature informed much of
his work)
 Married high school sweetheart; had 3 children
 Scholarship brought him to Stanford University in 1958
to be a part of a graduate creative writing program.
There he and his wife, Faye, moved into a house on
Perry Lane, the bohemian sector of Palo Alto. Here he
befriend some of the early Merry Pranksters and began
writing Zoo.
Writing Cuckoo’s Nest
 1960 volunteered to be subject in experiments
with hallucinogenic drugs at Veterans Hospital
at Menlo Park where he was paid to ingest
various psychoactive drugs, including LSD-25.
He was to report on the effects of the
government-sponsored scientists conducting
the experiments. He began taking the drugs
back to Perry Lane. This dramatically changed
his life
Writing Cuckoo’s Nest
 Near end of experiments began working
night shift in a mental ward of the VA
hospital. Thought patients were not really
crazy, just more “individualized’ than
society was willing to accept
 Parts of novel written while under
influence of LSD
His Life
 Success and sales of novel allowed him to buy
a home in La Honda. Here he moved his
family. There were no rules, fear was unknown
and sleep was out of the question. There was a
lot of pharmaceutical experimentation,
expressionistic living and wild parties attended
by Allen Ginsberg, the local Hells Angels and a
section of San Francisco’ hip community
His Life
 After completion of second novel, he
decided to embark on a cross country
trip. With the Merry Pranksters, he drove
from San Francisco to New York in
psychedelic painted bus to see Timothy
Leary.
His Life
 After trip renounced writing and set out to
explore other possibilities. He held publicized
acid tests- a cup of “electric” Kool-aid, a room
full of interactive multi-media gear to play with
and music of the acid test house band, the
Grateful Dead.
 Eventually, to avoid jail time for two possession
charges, he faked his own suicide and ran to
Mexico with his family. However, he was arrest
by FBI. He eventually returned to Oregon after
plea bargain
His Life
 Made his mark on 20th Century American
literature/history in two significant ways:
 best selling author of One Flew Over the
Cuckoo’s Nest (1962) and Sometimes a Great
Notion (1964)
 his drug-fueled activities and promotion of
large public Acid Test parties in and around
San Francisco in early 1960’s played a
foundational role in the countercultural scene
that would emerge there later in the decade
Writing Cuckoo’s Nest
 While working as an aid in the mental ward, he
got distracted by the patients and staff and by
the administration used to control and
“rehabilitate.”
 He began to draw and write sketches of the
patients
 He conceived of the character, Chief Bromden,
under the influence of peyote.
 He also arranged to receive electroshock
therapy in order to accurately describe the
treatment in the novel
Reading the book

McMurphy is said to argue for a new order of reality, “rejecting the plans
for the mental and social hygiene an institution state would impose, or
speaking out against the routine absurdity which through bureaucratic
administration can come to pass as fact.

The ward’s conformity and repression is a perfect representation of the
1950’s

McMurphy’s words are less important than how he says it. He is like a
politician or car salesman promising better things not just for him but for
the hospital

The walls with electric current and fog machines, or the nuts-and-bolts
technicians pulling spare parts in and out of patients is all metaphorical to
the reader (but to Chief they are real)
Chief has a rich visual imagination

Setting of Cuckoo’s Nest
 Mental institution; late 1950’s
 At the end of the 1950’s, “psychiatry at its height of
prestige”; mentally ill separated from society for
treatment (Faggen, Robert).
 Insane and “mad” were separated from society into
asylums and silenced
 According to sociologist Erving Goffman as quoted in
Robert Faggen’s introduction to Cuckoo’s Nest,
“Mental patients can find themselves crushed by the
weight of a service ideal that eases life for the rest of
us” (x).
 Some have argued that asylums allowed for social
purification
Intentions in Writing the
book
 Kesey did not intend to write a book against mental
institutions.
 Rather he worked in Menlo Park Veterans Hospital (at
first as a volunteer patient for testing of drugs), and
while there he became sympathetic to the patients
questioning the lines between sanity and insanity.
 “He began to consider whether madness really meant
the common practice conforming to a mindless system
or the attempt to escape from such a system together.
As Scalon, a character in Cuckoo’s states, “Hell of a
life. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Puts a
man in one confounded bind, I’d say” (x).
Understanding Meaning of
Cuckoo’s
 Surface meaning: McMurphy, a highly
individualistic, near superman works to
overturn Nurse Ratched’s senseless,
dehumanizing routines of the ward.
 Interpretative meaning: it is a
commentary on U.S. society. Kesey was
a part of the Beat generation who viewed
U.S. hopelessly conformist as to stifle
individuality.
Interpretative meaning
continued
 Essentially Kesey turned the ward into a symbol of the tricks of
control during postwar American society. This new therapy was
a way to force someone’s internal self to conform to someone
else's “ideal external environment” (Faggen xi)
 Institutional conformity was a big concern at the time (HUAC
(House Committee e on Un-American Activities)
 Ratched’s ward/society: laws and punishments (both for the
inmates and the boys/nurses). McMurphy challenges these
rules, thus, upsetting “democratic” procedure (ward policy)
 Might also question conformity in relationship to sexual
norms/sexuality
Significance of Title
 Comes from a nursery rhyme
 Compares working of civilization to nature
 In nature Cuckoo birds lay their eggs in other birds’ nests, one egg
per nest. The newly hatched cuckoo throws the other eggs and/or
live chicks from the nest. Thus the outcast becomes a tyrant and
through disorder holds control over the sensible design of all birds
live. It is a lot like Darwin’s survival of the fittest/naturalism.
 Harding, the most intellectual character in the book, recognizes
that the strong get stronger by devouring the weak. However, if it
didn’t work this way then it’d be like the cuckoo nest… “Nature
may be cruel but it allows more latitude than the monotony of a
system that discards everything that cannot be made to conform
to its monolithic dream of success” (Faggen xvii)