One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Research Paper

Ken Kesey was the quintessential all American boy next door, who by fate or circumstance, also happened to be a leader of the 1960’s psychedelic drug counter culture. His life and the characters in it read like they were taken straight from the pages of a fictional novel, perhaps one that Kesey himself would have written. Ken became well known for his authorship of the 1962 bestselling Novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. But Ken was more than just a talented writer. He was an athlete, actor and magician. He was also the founder of a group ,that drove a painted school bus named Further , experimented with LSD, and called themselves the Merry Pranksters. On September 17th, 1935 in La Junta, Colorado, Fred and Geneve Kesey welcomed their first born son Ken Elton Kesey into the world. Ken’s parents were dairy farmers and as Ken would later state “Hard shell Baptists.” In 1946

The Keseys relocated to Springfield, Oregon. A small town which at the time had a population of fewer than 10,000 Ken Kesey came of age in the 1950’s a time when the country was fresh out of WW2 United States Senator Joseph McCarthy was

The Pranksters painted the bus and it was dubbed “Further”. The bus driver was Neal Cassady. Ken Kesey wanted to drive across the country, take acid and film the journey. LSD was still legal at that time and the “Hippie” movement had yet to be known. As the bus rolled through small towns Kesey and the Pranksters were largely left alone. Surprisingly no one was ever arrested. Kesey would bring out the camera and start filming or send his Buddy Ken Babbs out to talk to the local police when things started to heat up. Kesey never got to see his vision of the footage being edited , The Film sat in rusting cans at the Kesey farm until 2011, when the movie Magic trip was