One Flew Over The Cuckoo’S Nest

R.P. McMurphy is not an average mental patient stuck on a ward at an institution. In fact, McMurphy is one of the most unique patients the ward in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” has ever seen. While most of the men on the ward committed themselves, McMurphy opted to be placed in the institution … Read more

The late 1950s and ’60s saw a merging of government and corporation. For the most part, this took place during the Eisenhower administration. This new political climate seemed to be too powerful to many in the beatnik generation. One of these is Ken Kesey, whose views on the “new government” are reflected in his novel … Read more

Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, mainly takes place in an Oregon psychiatric hospital ward controlled by Nurse Ratched according to a precise schedule and strict rules. The narrator, Chief Bromden, describes many patients in this ward, all of which have different problems and reasons for being there. Among the characteristics of the … Read more

“A hero such as Mac [McMurphy] needs to be perceived as a hero; and as our eyes and ears in the novel, the conventionally mute Chief Bromden becomes the expression of McMurphy’s greatness” (Klinkowitz). Chief Bromden, as an observant narrator, possesses the eyes and ears that lead readers through the 1960’s American Mental institution in … Read more

Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is unique in that the narrator and arguably main character of the story, Chief Bromden, is not the protagonist. Instead, McMurphy fills this role, and Bromden acts as both the main character, providing our view of the story, and the confidant of the true protagonist, McMurphy. Throughout … Read more

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey was published in 1962. The fifties and early sixties were a time of conformity versus rebellion in the United States. While the average breadwinner was returning to a suburban living room lit up with Father Knows Best, Allen Ginsberg was in Greenwich writing “Howl” to criticize … Read more

In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey portrays women as overwhelmingly negative, either dominating or submissive. Nurse Ratched, Vera Harding, and Billy’s mother are controlling women who use fear to reign over men and mask their feminine qualities. Candy Starr and Sandy Gilfilliam, on the other hand, are prostitutes who submit to objectification … Read more

Sexuality has always been a powerful tool for writers: it can make heroes or break them, forge relationships or destroy them, suggest utter misery or heavenly bliss. Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest offers a unique take on this theme: there is no single long-standing relationship in the whole of the novel, and … Read more

“Hell yes, we have a quota…We do keep women out, when we can. We don’t want them here — and they don’t want them elsewhere, either, whether or not they’ll admit it.” This statement, issued by an unnamed dean of a medical school in 1960, generated an uproar within the feminist community. Two years later, … Read more

Aragorn Louis most probably perfectly captured the relationship between McMurphy and Ratched in saying, “Light is meaningful only in relation to darkness, and truth presupposes error. It is these mingled opposites which people our life, which make it pungent, intoxicating. We only exist in terms of this conflict, in the zone where black and white … Read more