One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Research Paper

The 1950s and 60s called for a change in American society, sprouting a countercultural movement erected by the Beat generation. Beatniks, or members of this Beat generation, were a faction of Americans that rejected societal norms in attempt to find fulfillment through less mainstream means. They utilized illegal drugs, explored their sexualities, disdained materialism, and invented new styles in fashion, writing, and more. This crusade sprouted literary icons such as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, and Ken Kesey. Most famously, Ken Kesey (or Kenneth Elton Kesey) produced the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a classic story of the horrors in that era’s institutions and also delved into broader topics like sexuality, drugs, discrimination, and mental illnesses. Kesey’s inspirations for writing Cuckoo’s Nest notably came from the influence of the Beat generation, his time working at a mental hospital, and his voluntary testing of drugs for the government. Ken Kesey was born September 17th, 1935, in La Junta, Colorado. His parents, Geneva Smith and Frederick A. Kesey, were dairy farmers and

He would work as a night attendant in the psychiatric ward of the hospital. There he learned of the patients’ stories, causing him to question “his society’s definition of sanity, which seem to ask all people to conform to the same standards of behavior” (Novels for Students 226). Contemporary Literary Criticism states that the hospital also caused Kesey to be both “simultaneously captivated and revolted by the institutionalized treatment of mental illness” (“Ken Kesey” 206). Kesey also voluntarily undertook electroshock therapy so he could fully comprehend how he should go about writing it for the main character, McMurphy. Also at this hospital, Kesey willingly took apart in governmental drug