1. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest By Ken Kesey

2. … one flew east, one flew west, One flew over the cuckoo’s nest. - Children’s folk rhyme

3. “Beat Literature” Has a counter-culture attitude Has a distaste for any kind of social authority

4. Setting Primarily in the psychiatric ward of a mental institution

5. The author Ken Kesey: Refused to settle down Experimented with drugs and the literary form –The blurring of the line between fiction and reality – not to call into question the narrator’s view of events – is a reaction to the methods of the mental ward that emasculates and disempowers its patients.

6. The author (cont’d) - Kesey worked as an orderly at a mental health facility in CA. He spoke to patients and witnessed the inner workings of such a hospital. He also received electroconvulsive therapy and took psychoactive drugs like LSD.

7. Narrator He is a supposedly “deaf-mute” Native American (Chief Bromden) He has a skewed consciousness (some believe schizophrenia) He believes the ward is run by a mechanized conspiracy he calls “The Combine”

8. Protagonist P. Randall McMurphy: –Is a symbol of free-spiritedness and rebellion –Is the hero of the novel –Lives outside society and pierces the compliance of the patients –Impresses upon patients the value of their own lives –Becomes a victim of a world that will not allow men to be free

9. Themes Rebellion against authority and conformism Importance of freedom (e.g. sexual)

10. Metaphors Machines Christian symbolism

11. Other characters Head Nurse: Nurse Ratched (antagonist) The patients: “The Acutes” – patients who can be cured “The Chronics” – patients who will never be cured The Chronics are used to intimidate The Acutes to remind them of what could happen if they don’t comply.