How One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Changed American Culture

The Beat Generation was a literary and cultural movement that sprouted from the post-World War II era. It greatly influenced and changed American culture. From the rejection of materialism, experimentation with psychedelic drugs, and sexual liberation and exploration, the Beat Generation opened the door for a wide variety of unknown, and uncommon, views and ideas. One of the Beat Generations most famous and well-known writers was Ken Kesey. One of Ken Kesey’s most popular works, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, explores the challenges and lives of mental patients in an Oregon psychiatric hospital. Ken Kesey, an active user of psychedelic drugs, and prominent observant as a nurse’s aide in a mental institution, create a sense of authenticity

not only in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but as well as his other writing, and is rarely seen in books previously published. Kesey’s experiences and observations influence his characters, writing, and stories shared in his books, especially One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
At the age of 25, Ken Kesey, who was a creative writing student at Stanford University at the time, volunteered at Menlo Park Veterans Hospital where he was experimented on with an array of mind-altering, psychoactive drugs. “Unknown to him at the time, these experiments, where he was given psychoactive drugs, including LSD, were part of the CIA’s MKUltra project” (Furthur Down The Road). After a long time of using LSD, Kesey believed the drug had positive potential. “Kesey saw psychoactives as tools for exploring inward, learning more about ourselves and others, and finding new ways to see the world already around us” (Furthur Down The Road). During this time, Kesey was a part of a group called the Merry Pranksters. The Merry Pranksters openly used psychoactive drugs, and did an exceptional amount of outrageous things. The reasoning behind this was to break through conformist thought and to reconfigure American society. The variety of drugs used by Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters included but were not limited to, LSD, mescaline, amphetamine IT-290, and psilocybin, which were all legal at the time. “Over a period of several weeks, Kesey ingested hallucinogens and wrote of his drug-induced experiences for government researchers. From this experience, Kesey wrote his most celebrated novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (The Psychedelic ‘60s). With such great amount of use and experience with psychoactive drugs, Kesey is able to portray accurately, the altered state of mind such hallucinogens put you in. During this time, Ken Kesey was usually on acid or other drugs when he was writing. Throughout some of the writing of his best works, he was under the influence, which greatly impacted his authentic stories, characters, and writing.
While being a nurse’s aide in a psychiatric hospital, Ken Kesey was able to see hands on the treatment that mentally ill patients were subjected to, how they acted, and what kinds of things they endured during that time.

Working in a mental institution gave Kesey the insight and knowledge into patients and their perceptions of the world. During his time in the psychiatric ward, Kesey interviewed many patients, to get their perception on life inside and outside the psychiatric ward. This is where the inspiration came to form some of the characters in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. “Kesey also ingested LSD, called “tripping”, while interviewing the patients in order to gain insight into their altered perceptions of the world. He even convinced a friend to administer electroshock therapy to ensure an accurate depiction in his novel” (The Psychedelic ‘60s). Kesey had an immense interest in the altered-consciousness. When Kesey was on psychoactive drugs, he wrote some of the most vivid, important details in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. “The paranoid sections of the novel where Chief discusses his belief that the hospital where he stays is actually an emasculating factory for a larger Combine that represses individuality were largely written while Kesey was under the influence of mind-altering substances” (The Psychedelic ‘60s). Throughout Kesey’s experience volunteering in the psychiatric ward, he was able to see in depth how patients felt and how poorly they were treated during that time. “On one occasion, Kesey mentions, what’s the difference between the orderlies and the nurse and the patients? He began to see that they were all damaged in some way or another” (Kesey’s ‘Cuckoo’s Nest Still Flying At 50). Ken Kesey’s involvement and observation of treatment, therapy, and use of drugs on patients in the psychiatric ward validate the stories and writing in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. “Kesey’s works in the hospital’s mental wards is where he finds inspiration

for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (The Sixties: The Years That Shaped a Generation). Kesey going as far as subjecting himself to electroshock therapy and actively observing lives of patients in a psychiatric ward, give factual ideas that otherwise would not have been achieved.
Throughout One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey describes and lists many details from his experiences with drugs and his observations in the psychiatric ward, in his book. Almost all of his characters in his book were influenced by the patients in the mental institution. It took pure dedication, and eagerness to learn for Ken Kesey to undergo electroshock therapy, and to alter his mind with hallucinogenic drugs. “Ken Kesey’s discovery of Chief Bromden, despite not knowing anything about American Indians, gave him a character from whose point of view he could depict a schizophrenic state of mind and at the same time describe objectively the battle of wills between two other key characters, the new inmate McMurphy, who undertook to fight the system, and the tyrannical Big Nurse, Miss Ratched, who ended up lobotomizing McMurphy. Chief Bromden’s unstable mental state and Mr. Kesey’s imagining of it, presumably with the help of hallucinogenic drugs, also allowed the author to elevate the hospital into what he saw as a metaphor of repressive America, which Chief Bromden called the Combine” (Christopher Lehman-Haupt).