One flew over the cuckoo’s nest

One flew over the cuckoo’s nest

Author

Ken Kesey is an American writer born in the 30s.

He spends a lot of his childhood outside fishing, hunting etc, He also played football and wrestled and boxed.

Kesey is interested in theatre during his college years and is offered a scholarship to Stanford university.

He soon drops out to be participate fully in the counterculture movement.

Kesey is a volunteer at a research hospital and trial tests LSD a hallucinogenic drug and reports its effect. It is around this time, when he is spending quite some time near the psychiatric ward that he spots one of the patients, a big Indian man sweeping a corner of the ward. This combined with the fact that Kesey was going on a lot of drug trips inspired his first published novel: One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Soon after, Ken Kesey is arrested for possession of marijuana and flees the country. He tries to fake his suicide in Mexico but is quickly brought back to the States where he serves a 5-month sentence for drug possession.

In 1975, a cinema adaptation of his novel is released and becomes very successful. Kesey is not happy about this because he was not credited and didn’t get to see the script before the film was released. He sues the producers then moves to a farm in the countryside to raise his children with his wife. He continues writing novels and children’s stories until 2001 when he dies.

The counterculture movement:

the counterculture movement begins in the 60’s in America and is a social movement led by young Americans who were unhappy with the US’s conservative society and culture. The “hippies” as they called themselves protested things like social injustice, war, and consumerism. They preached love peace and supported women’s rights. One of the most prevalent ways the members of the counterculture rebelled against modern society was recreational drug use. The exploration of psychedelic experiences was of interest to many authors including Anthony Burges, Tom Wolf and, of course, Ken Kesey

Book Summary :

The story takes place in the psychiatric ward of the Oregon State Hospital in the US. We first meet Chief Bromden who is a patient in the hospital, and he tells us the story from the day Randle Patrick McMurphy is admitted to the ward.

The ward is under the jurisdiction, surveillance and ultimately control of one Nurse. Nurse Ratched. She holds a tight grasp on her patients and her staff, who she makes sure gets fired as soon as they contradict her. This includes the doctor who follows the patients and prescribes the medication

The arrival of McMurphy changes everything for the patients who are in the ward.

Randal soon discovers that the patients are totally passive and accepting of the way they are treated because of the looming threat that is continually imposed : being sent to the insane and receiving electro-shock therapy which leaves the individual unable to form coherent thoughts for weeks after.

Wreaking total havoc, from suggesting the ward be allowed a black jack table to gamble to wearing nothing but boxer shorts in front of all the staff including nurse Ratched, Randle slowly makes the other patient realize that they too have desires and things that they dislike about the way the ward works, but mostly that they have the power to speak up about it and rebel against the nurse.

After many rebellious acts, the idea of oragnising a fishing trip comes to mind. This of course is very appealing to a group of men, and they simply can’t resist joining Randle in a fight to be allowed to go on this trip. They finally manage to find a way past the Nurse’s objections and go fishing.

Some weeks later the patients sneak two of Randle’s girl friends into the ward and they all have a party breaking possibly every imaginable rule the nurse might have with the intention of helping Randle escape before the nurse’s return. they oversleep and get caught by the nurse.

As a result

Randle and Bromden are perscribed electro-shock therapy and one of the patients, Billy Bibbit kills himself after the Nurse tells him she will tell his mum about him having sex with one of the girls.

After these events many of the patients check themselves out considering themselves strong enough to face modern society. Bromden stays behind to check on Randle who has been subjected to more shock therapies and has undergone a lobotomy. This surgery has left him in a quasi-vegetative state.  One night after Randle has been wheeled back into the dormitory, Bromden suffocates him to end his suffering and escapes by breaking a window. The story ends with Bromden free and no longer hallucinating, facing the outside world, and heading back to meet his family.

Character presentation

1. Chief Bromden

he is a big man, an ex-football player who is half Indian, native American and half white.

By his name we quickly understand that he took his mother’s name Bromden.

He is a patient at Oregon State hospital and pretends to be deaf and mute. He is plagued by paranoïa and is very often hallucinating. Most of the time he is sweeping the floor and observing the happenings of the ward.

Bromden keeps himself in the hospital because he believes it will protect him from “the Combine” what he calls the controlling power that is society.

1. Randle Patrick McMurphy

He is a very muscly, redheaded, ex-underground fighter with lots of tattoos and a big fresh scar across his nose. He is transferred in from a prison work farm and diagnosed as psychopath from his excessive violence and sexual activity. He loves to gamble, he laughs and make lots of jokes.

1. Billy Bibbit

He is a patient at the hospital and has a very distinctive stutter. He is childlike in his facial features though he is a man in his thirties. His mum works at the hospital’s secretary office and is very close friends with the nurse.

Billy keeps himself in the hospital because he is terrified of the outside world and doesn’t believe he fits in. neither does his mother.

1. Hale Hardin

He is a patient at the hospital and is always trying to keep himself from using his hands when he speaks by shoving them in between his legs for example. He has a very attractive wife that sometimes comes to visit him. She is not very nice.

Hale keeps himself in the hospital because he is gay and is afraid to face society in his truest indentity.

Secondary character

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