Annotated Bibliography with Proposal by Leah Hastedt
Fairchild, Amy L. “Leprosy, Domesticity, and Patient Protest: The Social Context of a Patients’ Rights
Movement in Mid-Century America.” George Mason University Press, June-July 2006. Web. 15 Feb.
2011.
The article analyzes how patients in mental institutions became more aware of their rights, beginning in
1960. When searching for an article about mental institutions in the 1960s, I was hoping to find
something that would relate to the role Nurse Ratched held in the mental institution in One Flew Over
the Cuckoo’s Nest, and perhaps additional insight to other characters’ roles in the novel and why certain
people held them. This source was helpful because it examined how mental health patients became
more aware of their rights. I thought immediately of how the patients in the institution in One Flew Over
the Cuckoo’s Nest did not seem to know what their rights were. Looking more in depth at this source will
help me develop this issue further.
“First Measured Century: Interview: Alice Kessler-Harris.” PBS: Public Broadcasting Service. 2001. Web.
14 Feb. 2011.
This interview details the Feminist Movement of the 1960s– what it was about and how what happened
in previous years led up to its occurrence. This source was investigated to find out more about the
Feminist Movement of the 1960s and how it may relate to what roles women held and how powerful
they were in the 1960s. Depending on what I found for this question, I may or may not be able to relate
it to what roles were held in the mental institution in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Nurse Ratched
was in the highest position of authority at the institution and I wanted to learn if this was an unusual
occurrence and how much literary license the author may have been using in developing one of his main
characters. This article was extremely helpful in my understanding of what happened during the 1960s
with women’s roles and power. One particular thing I found helpful was why the Feminist Movement
occurred when it did in the 1960s, which was because of the large amount of women moving into the
workforce. Maybe Kesey was thinking about this when he put a woman in charge of all these men in a
mental institution.
Jimenez, Mary Ann. “Gender and Psychiatry: Psychiatric Conceptions of Mental Disorders in Women,
1960-1994.” SAGE. June-July 1997. Web. 15 Feb. 2011.
This source examines mental health in women in the 1960s. Hysteria is a prevalent theme as well in this
article. I was searching for information about how mental illnesses were treated during the 1960s to
possibly relate it One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. An interesting quote I found that might be helpful is:
“Changes in gender roles, in the social relations of power, and in the understanding of sexuality which
began in the 1960s, marginalized both the biological and classic psychoanalytic perspectives as
explanations of women’s mental disorders in American psychiatry.” It also says something about
hysteria changing the social construction of gender, transforming the role of women. This may be
helpful when I discuss Nurse Ratched’s role in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The article does not
really say anything about treating mental illness, so if this is what I want to focus on, I should look for a
different source.
Leupo, Kimberly. “The History of Mental Illness.” Web. 14 Feb. 2011.
This source summarizes the history of the American mental institution and how mental illness was
viewed and treated from Colonial America through the 1980’s. It covers what mental institutions are,
what patients were like at these institutions, how these institutions grew and evolved through the years,
how treatments varied and became more sophisticated, and how de-institutionalization became more
likely in the Second Half of the 20th century. This source was selected because it could help me learn
more about the management of mental institutions and treatments used within them during the
time One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was written (novel written by Ken Kesey in 1959 and published in
1962). I wanted to see if this source would corroborate the portrayal of the institution in the novel
regarding the gender/race makeup of management and the types of treatment provided to the inmates.
This source provided some information I did not know about mental health/institutions, but did not
answer all of my specific questions.
“United States History – The Civil Rights Movement 1960-1980.” Country Studies. 2003. Web. 14 Feb.
2011.
This source provides a synopsis of the civil rights movement in the United States during the 1960-1980
period.This source was selected because I thought it would give me more insight into the mood of the
country during the 1960s while the civil rights movement was beginning its ascendancy. Did AfricanAmerican men have much power? Did women? When did they begin to assume powerful roles and/or
positions of authority? I ask these questions because many of these traits ran through One Flew Over the
Cuckoo’s Nest. It seems as if the novel portrays a “reversal of roles” from real society in the 1960’s.
Women and black men did not hold positions of authority like the ones they held in the book. In this
article, it states, “The struggle of black Americans for equality reached its peak in the mid-1960s”. This
shows that African-Americans would not have held positions of authority/jobs like the ones held in the
mental institution in the book.
Proposal
When one reads One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, many themes and characters are presented to the
reader. It is a very powerful novel from the 1960s because of its setting, characters, and what goes on in
the mental institution including the fascinating interaction of the characters. The novel’s author, Ken
Kesey, creates a vivid picture of the stark life inside a mental institution, the multi-dimensional
personalities of the inmates residing there, and the controlling nature of the people in power at the
mental institution.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was written in 1959 and published in 1962, concurrent with two of the
major cultural developments in the history of the United States– the Civil Rights Movement was
beginning to reach its peak in 1962-1963 and the Feminist Movement was beginning to build
momentum within the country. The roles of women in society were beginning to change and evolve,
and segregation, while being far from over, was about to become less of a major issue. These are some
of the main points I plan to discuss in my paper for Inquiry 2b.
I will focus primarily on a central character in the novel, Nurse Ratched. When compared with the norms
of American society around 1960, this novel presented a very distinct reversal of typical roles. I will
explore how women normally were not in positions of power at this time, how Nurse Ratched handled
this authority, and how she related to and treated the inmates. I will relate women’s’ roles in the book
to their typical roles in the 1960’s and see if the assumptions I made in my annotated bibliography and
earlier in the proposal are true. Another role reversal I plan to explore relates to Nurse Ratched’s black
male security assistants. At this phase of the Civil Rights Movement, it would have been unusual to have
black employees in positions of authority and the author may have been predicting the future because
of what he saw happening within the movement.
I am confident that I will have enough information from researched sources to analyze properly the
cultural/historical context of several characters within One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Analyzing a
main character, Nurse Ratched, and several secondary characters, the black security assistants, will help
me explore things I never would have considered before doing this research. By using this approach to
examine the cultural context of this book, I believe I will develop a new and different appreciation for
Ken Kesey’s novel.
Editorial Team’s Note
As you will note when reading the essays in Cultural/Historical Analysis (otherwise known as Inquiry 2B),
you will notice an essay on One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Below is the Inquiry 2A assignment that
prepared Hastedt for her paper. Hastedt clearly has in mind specific cultural contexts that she thinks will
help her and her audience see the novel in a new light. With each entry in her annotated bibliography,
she notes the most important information and how it can possibly be applied to the novel (rather than
just summarizing it). This culminates in her proposal that clearly maps out what kind of questions she
will explore using this research for Inquiry 2B. Researching for a paper involves far more than just
collecting material; researching itself is an exploratory act that allows the writer to think about and
explore her ideas in the context of others. Hastedt’s work sets a fine example for this process.