One%20Flew%20Over%20the%20Cuckoo

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One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest by Ken Kesey
A Post Modern text by one of the leading Beat
Generation authors
1935-2001
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Terms to Know
Post Modernist reaction to the Modernist
movement, a literary and artistic trend that
defied the expectations cultivated over centuries
of writing and artistry. Beat Generation group
of American novels and poets who came to
prominence in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Jack Kerouac introduced the phrase Beat
Generation sometime around 1948 to describe his
friends and as a general term describing the
underground, anti-conformist youth gathering then
in New York. The Beat Generation has also been
called the Counter Culture. Stream of
consciousness a literary technique which
describes an individual's point of view by giving
the written equivalent of the character's thought
processes. Stream-of-consciousness writing is
strongly associated with Modernism.
Stream-of-consciousness writing is usually
regarded as a special form of interior monologue
and is characterized by leaps in syntax and
punctuation that can make the prose difficult to
follow, tracing as they do a character's thought
process and internalized feelings, rather than
the spoken word.
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The Beat Generation
Beat Generation group of American novels and
poets who came to prominence in the late 1950s
and early 1960s. American author Jack Kerouac
introduced the term Beat Generation sometime
around 1948 to describe his alternative friends
and as a general term describing the underground,
anti-conformist youth gathering then in New York.
They were also known as the counter-culture.
Poetry readings were a common forum for
Beatniks to articulate dissatisfaction with
societal constraints. Allen Ginsbergs poem
HOWL illustrated what many mainstreamers viewed
as the moral and social decay of the time.
Groups such as the Beats were a part of a
larger movement called the counter-culture.
This movement led to the emergence of the
hippies of the 60s. Hippies were dedicated to
peace, love, and happiness and they endeavoured
to expand their minds through the use of
mind-altering drugs such as LSD
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I saw the best minds of my generation
destroyed by madness, starving hysterical
naked. . . --Allen Ginsberg, Howl (1956)
1926-1997
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LSD
Ken Kesey took part in scientific experiments at
a hospital, Menlo Park Veterans Hospital,
trialling LSD as a state-controlled mind-altering
substance. At the time, LSD was thought that it
could help those suffering mental disorders such
as schizophrenia. It was not so effective as a
medical tool as it induced hallucinations. To
the counter-culture of the 1960s LSD was a good
thing it helped hippies to explore their own
mind and expand their horizons.
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Still ahead
                       
The Merry Pranksters Further Tom Wolfe
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The Merry Pranksters were a circle of people with
Ken Kesey at the center, living communally at his
home in La Honda, California. Their acid tests
were chronicled by Tom Wolfe in his non-fiction
novel The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.
They traveled across the United States
in a psychedelically-painted school bus labeled
Further. The trips original purpose was to
visit the 1964 Worlds Fair in New York City.
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Author Hunter S. Thompson remembered La Honda as
"the world capital of madness. There were no
rules, fear was unknown, and sleep was out of the
question."
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About the novel

• Inspiration for Cuckoos Nest came from Keseys
  time as a volunteer at MenloHospital.
• Kesey believed patients were not insane but that
  society had pushed them
• out because they did not fit the conventional
  ideas of how people were
• supposed to behave.
• Cuckoos Nest published in 1962, at the height
  of the Cold War. It was an immediate critical
  and popular success.
• Film adaptation in 1975 won eight academy
  awards. Kesey left production, two
• weeks after production began and never saw the
  film.
• Film centers on Jack Nicholsons rendition of
  McMurphy, and Chief Bromden
• loses his narrative powers.

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• Relevant vocabulary
• Combine
• Existentialism
• Lobotomy
• Psychotic
• santiy
• Symbols
• combine
• fog
• character names
• fishing trip
• prostitution
• medicine
• death
• sex
• (both action and gender)
• Bromden

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Some images that McMurphy would have seen in his
ward
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