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Ken Kesey was born in 1935 in La Junta, Colorado and was raised in Springfield, Oregon. He wrote, “One Flew into the Cuckoo’s Nest” in 1962, an in-depth look into the environment of a psychiatric ward. In the 1960’s Kesey was a paid volunteer as a mental subject for the U.S. Army. During this time, he wrote about his experiences with mind-altering drugs. Kesey also worked in a psychiatric ward as a hospital attendee. He wrote about the abuses in the system, which served as a backdrop for his novel One Flew into the Cuckoo’s Nest. Kesey tended to write under the influence of acid especially at the time he wrote the novel. He was also part of a group, “The Merry Pranksters” who spent time on the open road and were supporters of open drug use. EXTEND 2. T he novel is structured as a chronological story of events that take place in the mental hospital. Kesey wrote it as a stream of consciousness style, which could be due to represent the main character or simply the way Kesey expresses himself through his writing. He uses flashbacks to when Bromden was a child to give a short background on the characters and make it seem more personal. The characters talk as if they have been …show more content…
The novel is not filled with as much irony as it is other literary devices. The type of irony used is mainly hyperboles, oxymoron, and euphemisms. The hyperboles are most used as Kesey talks about all the serious things that happen in an extreme way. There are a few oxymoron, one of which being, “Clean out of control” (5). That oxymoron helps define the novel, one of structure and chaos, sanity and insanity. For euphemisms, there are not very many but the main one is being “fixed” in many ways that are a lot harsher than fixed. Kesey begins this with, “ Took him away to be fixed” (16). Where he is not just being “ fixed” most likely he was receiving a lobotomy, Kesey could be omitting using this as a euphemism or Bromden could just not know what it is exactly they
Ken Kesey’s, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, is a novel containing the theme of emotions being played with in order to confine and change people. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest is about a mental institution where a Nurse named Miss Ratched has total control over its patients. She uses her knowledge of the patients to strike fear in their minds. Chief Bromden a chronic who suffers from schizophrenia and pretends to be deaf and mute narrates the novel. From his perspective we see the rise and fall of a newly admitted patient, RP McMurphy. McMurphy used his knowledge and courage to bring changes in the ward. During his time period in the ward he sought to end the reign of the dictatorship of Nurse Ratched, also to bring the patients back on their feet. McMurphy issue with the ward and the patients on the ward can be better understood when you look at this novel through a psychoanalytic lens. By applying Daniel Goleman’s theory of emotional intelligence to McMurphy’s views, it is can be seen that his ideas can bring change in the patients and they can use their
The author Ken Kesey was born in La Junta, Colorado and went to Stanford University. He volunteered to be used for an experiment in the hospital because he would get paid. In the book “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, Kesey brings up the past memories to show how Bromden is trying to be more confident by using those thoughts to make him be himself. He uses Bromden’s hallucinations, Nurse Ratched’s authority, and symbolism to reveal how he’s weak, but he builds up more courage after each memory.
Kesey, Ken. One flew over the cuckoo's nest, a novel. New York: Viking Press, 1962. Print.
Kunz, Don. Symbolization in Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. A Casebook on Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Ed. George J. Searles. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. 1989.
This essay will be exploring the text One flew over the Cuckoo’s nest by Ken Kesey and the film Dead poet’s society written by Tom Schulman. The essay will show how the authors use over exaggerated wildcard characters such as McMurphy and Keating. The use of different settings such as an insane asylum and an all-boys institution. And Lastly the use of fore shading to show how the authors can use different texts to present similar ideas in different ways.
Ken Kesey presents his masterpiece, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, with popular culture symbolism of the 1960s. This strategy helps paint a vivid picture in the reader's mind. Music and cartoons of the times are often referred to in the novel. These help to exaggerate the characters and the state of the mental institution.
It would be hard to ignore biographical information when analyzing a work by Ken Kesey, because of both his involvement with the Beat writers and as an advocate for hallucinogenic drugs. In fact, it is said that Kesey created the narrator of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest during a peyote hallucination, when an Indian came to him (Tanner 21). While his choice of the Indian, a supposed deaf mute, as narrator seems out of the norm it is even more so when comparing Kesey to the other Beat writers. McMurphy can be compared closely to Dean Moriarty of Jack Kerouac's On The Road, but Bromden is nothing like Kerouac's narrator, Sal Paradise. Certainly the loud and boisterous McMurphy would have made for an interesting narrator for this novel but this would have provided for a very different ending. Even the...
Sutherland, Janet R. "A Defense of Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's NEst." English Journal 61.1 (1972): 28-31. JSTOR. Web. 31 Oct. 2013. .
Malin, Irving. “Ken Kesey: One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Critique 5.2 (1962): 81-84. Rpt. in Kesey 440-444.
The author of One Flew over the Cuckoo 's Nest, allows the reader to explore different psychoanalytic issues in literature. The ability to use works literature to learn about real world conflicts allows us to use prior knowledge to interact with these problems in reality. Ken Kesey, the author of the above novel and Carl Jung, author of “The Archetype and the Collective Unconscious” wrote how the mind can be easily overtaken by many outside factors from the past or present. The novel takes place in an asylum that is aimed to contain individuals that have a mental issue or problem. The doctors and care takers are seen as tyrants and barriers that inhibit the patients to improve their health, while the patients are limited by their initial conditions
In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” The father of transcendentalism, Emerson believed that people who resist change to be what is most natural, themselves, are the true heroes of the world. Ken Kesey, another popular writer, wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in a similar spirit. His novel takes place on the ward of a controlling army nurse at an Oregon mental institution in the late 1950s. The storyline mainly follows the interactions between Nurse Ratched, a manipulating representation of society, and Randle Patrick McMurphy, a patient, gambler, and renegade. Kesey echoes the transcendentalists and romantics in his work by
Chief Bromden, the narrator of Kesey’s text, is a “six-feet seven inches…Columbia Indian” afflicted with schizophrenia. Bromden immediately explains that the events of the novel are “the truth even if [they] didn’t happen”, positioning readers to question his reliability as a narrator. Bromden begins by stating, “They [the aides] are out there…a hum of black machinery, humming hate and death and other hospital secrets”. Bromden’s paranoia and schizophrenic tendencies are hinted at through his impeding visions of Ratched and her despotic ward, all of which are littered with mechanical “devices” and “instruments”. Furthermore, Bromden sees Nurse Ratched “blow up big as a tractor…so big [he] can smell the machinery inside”. Nevertheless, Bromden believes he too is a “machine”, but “with flaws that can’t be fixed”, as his life has been filled with instances where the power exercised has been absolute. For instance, his mother’s tyrannical dominance over his father led to the loss of his ancestral land, his conscription in WW2 exposed him to the atrocities of war, and his reputed “200 electro-shock treatments” all culminated in schizophrenia. Bromden is now forced to hide in hallucinatory “green fog”, something he believes he “can slip into and feel safe”. In striking
Chief Bromden, known as Chief Broom, is a long-term patient that serves in the psychiatric ward due to his schizophrenic condition. Because of his condition, he creates many hallucinations. For example, he believes that he can hear mechanical operations behind the walls of the psychiatric ward. In discussion of Chief Bromden, one controversial issue has been whether or not he is a heroic figure because of his hallucinations, failing to address the real events in the novel. On the other hand, many contend how Chief Bromden is a hero utilizes his surroundings and observations to overcome his psychosis. I believe that Ken Kesey portrays Chief Bromden as a figure who completes the hero’s journey because he overcomes his own psychosis and decides to express himself and live his own life.
In Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, the author refers to the many struggles people individually face in life. Through the conflict between Nurse Ratched and McMurphy, the novel explores the themes of individuality and rebellion against conformity. With these themes, Kesey makes various points which help us understand which situations of repression can lead an individual to insanity. These points include: the effects of sexual repression, woman as castrators, and the pressures we face from society to conform. Through these points, Kesey encourages the reader to consider that people react differently in the face of repression, and makes the reader realize the value of alternative states of perception, rather than simply writing them off as "crazy."
Ken Kesey in his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo 's Nest question a lot of things that you think almost everyday. With this famous portrait of a mental institute its rebellious patients and domineering caretakers counter-culture icon Kesey is doing a whole lot more than just spinning a great yarn. He is asking us to stop and consider how what we call "normal" is forced upon each and every one of us. Stepping out of line, going against the grain, swimming upstream whatever your metaphor, there is a steep price to pay for that kind of behavior. The novel tells McMurphys tale, along with the tales of other inmates who suffer under the yoke of the authoritarian Nurse Ratched it is the story of any person who has felt suffocated and confined by our