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One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Ken Kesey. Ken Kesey 1935-2001. Born in Oregon in 1935, Kesey grew up in Colorado; he married his high school sweetheart in 1956 and graduated from the University of Oregon in 1957.
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Ken Kesey1935-2001 • Born in Oregon in 1935, Kesey grew up in Colorado; he married his high school sweetheart in 1956 and graduated from the University of Oregon in 1957. • In graduate school the following year, Kesey met Vic Lovell, a psychology student who was doing experiments with psychomimetic drugs. Kesey agreed to be a paid subject in drug experimentation.
Kesey actually worked as a night warden on a ward in a mental hospital. He was so determined to get the feel of being a patient that he underwent ECT. • While at Stanford, Kesey volunteered for medical studies on the effects of psychoactive drugs (often hallucinogens). • He used these experiences to inform how Chief would see the world.
Ken Kesey1935-2001 • One of the drugs tested was LSD, under which Kesey wrote sections of Cuckoo’s Nest. Throughout the 1960’s, Kesey sank deeper into the drug culture and developed into a leader of the counterculture hippie set. (Eventually, he was arrested for drugs and fled to Mexico to avoid prison; he later returned and served 6 months in jail.) • Kesey formed the Merry Pranksters, a group of people who lived together and at one time traveled around the country on a painted bus they called “Further.”
Ken Kesey1935-2001 • The misdeeds of the Merry Pranksters were chronicled by Tom Wolfe in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1967), as well as in poems by Allen Ginsberg. Other contemporaries include Timothy Leary, Jack Kerouac, Hunter S. Thompson, Neal Cassady, and The Grateful Dead. • Kesey remained in the public eye with articles in numerous magazines, such as Rolling Stone, Newsweek, Esquire, and High Times. At age 60, he appeared in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. In 1997, he reunited with the Merry Pranksters at a Phish concert, one of his last public performances.
“I was too young to be a beatnik and too old to be a hippie” (1999). • Kesey is often remembered as the link between the Beat generation of the 1950’s and the Hippie generation of the 1960’s. • Kesey died in November of 2001, after an operation for liver cancer. • Kesey’s beliefs continue to influence the next generation; he is memorialized in print as well as on the internet.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s NestKen Kesey • While working in the mental institution, Kesey started formulating the plot for Cuckoo’s Nest. He decided many of the patients were nonconformists rather than insane. Many characters were based on actual patients and staff at the hospital. • He wrote parts of the book while on acid, especially to create Chief Bromden. • Cuckoo’s Nest was published in 1962. It has been adapted into a Broadway play and an Academy-award winning film and is taught regularly in classrooms.
Preliminary research Lysergic acid diethylamide. Generally, LSD causes expansion and altered experience of senses, emotions, memories, time, and awareness. Itwas introduced into the US in 1948 and marketed as a psychiatric cure-all, a remedy for everything from schizophrenia to criminal behavior, sexual perversions and alcoholism. LSD was the original centerpiece of the CIA's top secret MK-ULTRA project, an ambitious undertaking conducted from the 1950s-1970s designed to explore the possibilities of pharmaceutical mind control. LSD
Lobotomy A type of psychosurgery performed to alleviate mental disturbances by severing the midbrain, which is associated with emotional arousal, from the frontal cortex, the seat of the higher mental processes. •The goal was to cut the nerves that run from front of the brain to the rear. A techniques was devised that involved drilling two holes on either side of the forehead, insert a surgical knife, and sever the prefrontal cortex from the rest of the brain.
Shock therapy A psychiatric treatment method in which electricity is used to produce a generalized seizure; used to treat mania, major depression, and certain forms of schizophrenia
Setting: a mental institution in the Pacific Northwest, specifically Oregon, in the 1950’s • Tone: critical and allegorical, with the author’s attitudes depicted through Bromden and McMurphy • Point of view: Chief Bromden narrates in first person, as events appear to him, compromised by paranoia and hallucinations and enhanced by the fact that he overhears staff conversations. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
The dangers of dehumanization • Good versus evil • Individuality vs. conformity • The corrupting nature of power • Appearance versus reality • Physical and moral courage • Sanity versus insanity • Therapeutic role of nature and laughter Major motifs
Guests had to check in • Most were admitted by family members • Many patients had the power to leave on their own but were “controlled” by staff and manipulated to believe that they needed to stay. Similarities from the hospital to the novel
Over crowded • Dirty • Not nurturing • No privacy • Similar to—or in some cases worse than—prison Conditions at the Mental Hospital
Combine Harvester A combine harvester is an agricultural machine that harvests all types of cereals, oil seeds, and legumes through four main steps: The crop is cut and directed into a rotating chamber with a series of beaters going the opposite direction. The grain is dislodged, falls to the bottom, separated from debris by sieves and wind. The grain is transferred to a hopper for transfer and the debris falls out the rear
Discipline is absolutely necessary in most situations. Discipline
The best place for those with mental illnesses is in an institution and/or hospital.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest sounds more interesting now.
