Summer Essay

Will Satcher

Mrs. Bosch
AP Literature
14 September, 2008
One Flew Over, One Flew Out
In 1959 Kesey wrote a novel called Zoo pertaining to the beatniks presiding in the North Beach community of San Francisco that was never published. He wrote another novel a year later called End of Autumn about the life of a college football and wrestling star, which, once again, went unpublished. Kesey started writing a third novel, however, which he entitled One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The inspiration for Kesey's novel was derived from his work at the Menlo Park Veterans' Hospital on the night shift with Gordon Lish. There, Kesey could often be found conversing with the patients, occasionally under the influence of the hallucinogenic drugs with which he had volunteered to experiment in a CIA funded test at the hospital. Kesey believed that these patients were not insane, but rather that society had forsaken them because they did not conform to the conventional ideas of the way humans were to act and behave, operating much like robots instead of men and women. He believed that people should not be cast away like broken machines, a phrase often used in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, often stating that he believed highly in mankind’s inherent freedom from influences of two different generations, stating that he was “too young to be a beatnik, but too old to be a hippie.” The book was a major success and was later adapted into a successful stage play by Dale Wasserman, then into a screenplay by Miloš Forman in 1975. The film starred Jack Nicholson and won the "Big Five" Academy Awards: Academy Award for Best Picture, Academy Award for Best Actor (Nicholson), Academy Award for Best Actress (Louise Fletcher), Academy Award for Best Director (Forman) and the Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay (Lawrence Hauben, Bo Goldman).
This is by far his most widely acclaimed work, as it raises questions relating to how many react to the behavior of mankind versus how they should feel, based on the worth of a man and whether or not humans should be valued individually. It is shown, rather obviously in fact, through the contempt of Nurse Ratched (most commonly called the “Big Nurse”) toward all of the patients and much of the staff, that Kesey reflects his views of those who do not value the human life through her. Other characters such as Randle McMurphy, the protagonist, and Chief Bromden, the character whose point of view the novel is written in, illustrate Kesey’s view on those who do believe that a man has worth. One can clearly discern Kesey’s aversion toward those such as Ratched, who believe a man is just a robot, some not able “to get fixed, but just to keep them from walking around the streets giving the product a bad name.” (Kesey, 14) Seeing as she doesn’t believe they are wholly humans, one might question her qualifications for running the staff of a hospital meant to care for people and help “fix” those who are “broken.” She sees many of them as useless and meaningless, and the rest of them she regards “smiling, pitying, patient, and disgusted all at once—a trained expression,” meaning she deals with them as if they are all the same; not individuals, rather a body of gray scum, barely able to be maintained. (152) The infamous Public Relations man speaks of the hospitals in the older days, when there was brutality; when there was filth and bad food, in comparison to how “cheery” they are now. Yet one aspect has not changed within the hearts of the nurses: the belief that the patients are of little to no value. Brutality is about an equal trade for neglect. McMurphy, however, is a completely different story. He is Kesey’s tool so that he might project his belief of the value of a man, that each should be appraised as an equal to the next, and that humans, however “damaged” they may be, should not be cast aside as worn machinery. McMurphy treats them all as equals, although he is somewhat of an ass. They are humans to him, something that none of them have felt in a long time. One can tell simply by the way he acts, talks, and walks that yes, he may be a jerk, but he is also the type of man who sees worth in each human, who views them all as the equal man to himself, and would rather fight with than against them, rather rally them than put them down. In a way, this can be attributed to his simplicity of manner, shown in his reasoning for his admittance, that he was in a few too many “hassles” at the farm, that society believes a psychopath is a man who “fights too much and fucks too much, but they ain’t wholly right…” (13) And it is not right for society to deem a man mentally insane because of his differences, no matter how immense. Granted that, understandably, aside from the criminally insane who should probably be imprisoned for the safety and benefit of mankind, if there is no real damage done can a man truly be called insane, or is he simply out of the ordinary? Kesey believed that a man was not only worth what he worked to be, but that each had the potential to be anything, to be the greatest human on earth, yet each was still equal, and these beliefs echoed boisterously throughout each clinic patient, especially McMurphy and Bromden. He conveys what will happen to each of us if we allow society to become too powerful, too much like Nurse Ratched. Those who are too “out of the ordinary” will be forced to conform, transformed into empty shells of what once glowed. His open-mindedness somewhat promotes freedom and can be connected, if one so inquires, to the freedom of America, yet the status quo of what each person is expected to be. The novel itself shows, through the characters, that a man is worth what he makes himself to be, large or small; yet that is still something, and thus we are all equal in our different ways, thus, each deserves to be free.
These main characters, especially pitted against their highly suppressive environment, not only display honor and strength in themselves and their fellow patients (although sometimes ill-placed, e.g. when Cheswick looks to the others for “something to be done” about their freedom), but also some strategic genius in that they know when enough is enough so as to avoid any severe punishment. Each piece of this book contributes to the theme of equality and worth: setting, point of view, character style, imagery, everything. What is especially eerily moving is the art contained throughout the novel, usually of characters introduced. They all seem as scribbles of a madman upon pages, blotting his imagination and memory onto whatever he can to show the world that he did in fact have something. Each character is so well played that a screenplay was hardly necessary, although brilliantly executed. These characters each bring something to the table, be it a necessity for freedom contained in most of them, or an obviously odd demeanor, likely the reason they were admitted instead of true insanity. The Chief, in many ways alike to McMurphy, especially in that he is more misunderstood than insane, is the character whose point of view the novel is from, a genius scheme on Kesey’s part. Not only does the reader not truly know the thoughts of any of the other characters, forcing them to formulate suggestions, to think as Chief Bromden, but this also places the reader in his situation, fusing altogether with the thoughts and ideas of Bromden, becoming a piece of his subconscious, a small camera in his eyes. Kesey displays Bromden’s thought pattern to show that he is not truly insane, which proves altogether that he should not truly be in the hospital, and that none regard him as an equal, none believe there is worth to his soul. For whatever petty reason this innocent man is locked into a world that he has been forced to accept, forced to “mind… like a baby.” (4) And the characters! They are simply brilliantly woven into the plot, each one of crucial importance. The way they walk and talk in all of their different ways; Nurse Ratched, the machine-like spider, and McMurphy as hearty and wild and free spirited as an animal, every one of them tightly locked in a battle for equality, most of them ready at any time to tear each-other limb from limb, yet some of them too enslaved by the view of how they are supposed to behave to allow themselves to do so, just as they prohibit others for the same reasons. Although the book does not end happily, it does convey the painful and horrid truth: not all humans believe their fellow humans are equal or worthy to live. Kesey shows how America is headed down a dangerous path that cannot end in freedom or happiness for all, but that this can be changed.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest conveys the consequences of a lack of equality and thus freedom. It shows what the American people must never allow their country to become, and submits that once this does occur there may be no peaceful way to end it. It also shows how some are segregated by society simply because they are different from what society believes they are supposed to be and sometimes not of sound mind, although technically perfectly sane. This book should not only be included on a list of high literary merit, but encouraged by teachers and scholars for students to read and absorb, as the message is one that resounds throughout an eternally repetitive history—that each human is worth something, each should be considered equal, and none should be restrained simply for their difference, and even encouraged.






















Works Cited


Ken Kesey. Amazon Biographies. 2008. 15 September 2008. [http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/kkesey.htm]

Ken Kesey & the Merry Pranksters. 1998/06-02-08. Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia. 15 September 2008. [http://lib.virginia.edu/small/exhibits/sixties/kesey.html]

Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. 1999/05-08. Peggy Whitley and Susan Goodwin. 15 September 2008. [http://kclibrary.lonestar.edu/kesey.html]

Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1962.