Wednesday, January 1, 2014
Kesey Excerpt--due January 23
Ken Kesey experienced situations most readers wouldn't even consider while dreaming. Type 300+ words about an excerpt--one you give the page number and paragraph number for--that only Kesey could have written. Expound on Kesey's inventiveness, imagination, and authenticity.
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92 comments:
I chose the article on page 90, the very first paragraph (and if I could, I'd also like to add in the single sentence following the paragraph). This paragraph could only be written by Ken Kesey himself, only because I feel like there are parts to it that could describe other events that occur in this world. The second sentence, for example, could have a double meaning. Although this sentence is describing his "hallucination" about the man getting cut up, it could actually be applied to the ward and what goes on there, just to a lesser degree. They may not be cutting people up, but the people who work at this insane asylum absolutely assert their dominance on the patients there, just through other ways. This ties into the statement that the public relations guy says about the treatment of the patients, "...mental hospitals have eliminated all the old-fashioned cruelty." This is ironic, because they may not be cruel physically, but they're still emotionally destructive to the already-unstable patients. This brings me to the last sentence (after the paragraph), which I believe Kesey wrote to add emphasis on this irony. He wants to make it seem like Chief Bromden's hallucinations may be more significant than what the reader would assume. He added this to create more mystery, and this technique leaves it up to the reader to decide who to believe. Symbolically, this paragraph shows that much more than a hallucination is happening at the mental hospital. This is pure inventiveness on Kesey's part. His efforts to tie the whole book together end up amounting to much more than one single meaning throughout this book. Because of his authenticity, his books are truly one-of-a-kind. His meanings behind the novel aren't blatantly stated, making it more interesting to interpret his works.
Lmarais…
It was quite difficult to choose which article would be the best but I decided to go with page 88 the second paragraph. Chiefs many dreams/hallucinations about the combine world. My first guess is that they are simply literary devices to emphasize the point that Chief is truly insane person, since he is telling the story. Or am I missing the point by assuming that either these dreams are merely a symptom of insanity, and are therefore meaningless and worthless. Or the chief is not insane and the dreams are profound insight into reality.
The point Ken Kesey is making is that the dreams can be both of these things at the same time. People who society labels as ‘insane’ and separates out from the rest of society in institutions, are actually just people who have a different perspective on reality, a different way of experiencing and thinking about reality. The Chief is insane, according to the authority figures in our society, but he is also a unique individual with profound insight into reality. To label such a person as ‘crazy’ and lock him away from the rest of society, to dismiss him as a worthless and deviant person, is evidence that our society is repressive and unfree. Kesey challenges the very duality of sanity/insanity throughout the book.
Ellis 7
On page 16 of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Kesey describes the differences between all the types of Chronics. In the first full paragraph he talks about a certain chronic named Ellis who is nailed to the wall every day with “horror on his face”. Only with Kesey’s experience in asylums would someone be able to invent such a scenario. Everyone on the outside of these places thought asylums were the perfect happy place for the mentally ill. Kesey saw them as a place where being hung to the wall by nails was perfectly realistic.
Besides using Ellis as a character to shock the audience, Kesey uses clever symbolism to draw compassion out of the readers. Innocent and helpless Ellis is hung on the wall just as Jesus was hung on the cross. Neater of them is to blame for their torturer. Cesar crucified Jesus when he was innocent and Ellis was turned into a vegetable by the asylums operations.
If that was not enough for the poor character, Kesey adds more symbolism to Ellis with is name. Ellis Island was a symbol of new life and freedom for immigrants to America. In the asylum, freedom is destroyed. All happiness is taken away from the Chronics and Acutes when they walk through the door. They basically become as influential to society as a vegetable--hung on the wall like art. Ellis does not even have the option to relieve himself in private. Everything he does is in view of all the nurses and other patients.
I admire Kesey’s creativity to put so much meaning into one character in his story. This chronic is a Christ figure, a freedom figure and an example of the asylum’s cruelty. Ellis is not a main character, but he is the first one to open your eyes to the tragedy in this “hospital.”
On page 88, the first paragraph, Kesey is describing how one of the workers appears through Chief Bromden's eyes during his dreams. I find this paragraph acting as one of the extremely vital descriptions in the book because it further establishes how corrupt the ward is. Even in Chief's dreams he is still haunted by the fake, plastic, machine-like ways of the ward. I think Kesey included this description to emphasis how life can be this way too. He has faced many challenges and experiences in his life allowing him the opportunity to meet many different kind of people. Throughout life everyone meets individuals with brutal intentions, zero ambition that put on a facade of beauty to hide what's underneath. Kesey has met these people, and he is describing them through Chief Bromden. He is connecting the book to real life while also using this paragraph to expand on how the ward works as a machine. Once you are sucked in you are nothing but another part to help things run smoothly. You are replaceable. You are not human.
He describes the worker as “a face handsome and brutal and waxy like a mask, wanting nothing. I’ve seen a million faces like it.” This description strikes me as being strong but also bothers me because I feel Kesey is trying to say that a million faces are existing, hiding behind a mask, making nothing out of their life. Yet, this could be one of his main points trying to be established throughout the whole book. In the ward, every patient is dictated. Not one of them attempts to change anything. They all know that they are part of this machine yet they do nothing to stop it. Is humanity the same way? Do we do anything to be the change we want to see or are we just part of the machine, faces wanting nothing? I feel Kesey is trying to establish his feelings of what he sees in the world: not enough change. His book is how he attempts to make a difference and be heard.
Bingen 7
I chose the very last paragraph on page 90. In this paragraph, I think that Kesey is trying to tell readers about his experiences at a real-life asylum. Blastic is said to be treated better dead than he ever was alive. I believe that Kesey likely witnessed his share of deaths at mental institutions, and he put in the last sentence of the paragraph as a deliberate attack on the treatment of patients at mental institutions. Having a basic knowledge of the atrocities committed on patients in asylums myself, nothing that happened to the characters seemed to be out of touch with the neglect shown towards real-life patients, as sad as that may sound. However, the final sentence profoundly impacted me because it showed that the leaders of the asylum had the capacity to treat the patients with respect, but never did, except for when they were dead. I think that this lopsided treatment was exactly what Kesey was bothered by the most, and only someone who had first-hand experience at mental institutions could write about it with such authenticity.
I also believe that only Kesey could have written this paragraph because of the inventiveness he uses to show just how smart and sane Chief Bromden really is by connecting it to other parts of the book. Just after he has the nightmare depicting Blastic’s death, Bromden realizes that his hallucination has become a reality, just like all of the others. I think that the rest of his hallucinations are Bromden’s inner sanity coming through as they are all true but are not necessarily happening in reality. For example, he sees the fog regularly, which seems to be a hallucination, but proves to be a very real state of overmedication. Also, he sees just how dehumanized everyone involved in the institution has become when he sees Blastic’s guts as rust and ash. Furthermore, he sees all of the nurses as a machines. Most notably, he sees Nurse Ratched as a combine, who picks up the patients and spits them out as gutless, mechanical human beings. After all, in the first chapter, Bromden says “But it’s the truth, even if it didn’t happen.”
“It’s still hard for me to have a clear mind thinking on it. But it’s the truth even if it didn’t happen.” I believe that that is one of the best quotes in modern literature, and I believe that Ken Kesey has one of the most prolific and interesting ways of writing in the 20th century. I truly appreciate the way Kesey makes readers believe in his story but at the same time not believe in his story, using the mentally ill as a catalyst for “the rest of us” (aka those who are “sane” and “think normally”) to question reality and its state. Kesey uses characters who do not see reality in the same sense that most of us like to think we do, and by making Cheif think coherently with bouts of delusion, we can relate to him. Yes, he may believe a man in being cut to pieces, and while it may not be reality, it is the truth to him. That’s what makes Kesey’s work so powerful, his ability to coherently and clearly show us a way of thinking that isn’t coherent and clear. I also believe this is a powerful tool because for many people it is hard to remember and understand that others do not think in the same terms and conditions that they do. One student may think in football terms and another in Chess terms and another may be living in a completely different reality. Solipsism is a philosophical theory which states that nothing can be verified except the existence of one’s own mind. This seems silly at first; and who, after all, would wish to deny that the world around them exists? The only problem is that it’s impossible to verify the existence of anything except your own consciousness. Take a moment to remember all the plausible dreams you’ve ever had in your life. Couldn’t it be possible that what you see around you is nothing but an incredibly elaborate dream? So what can we verify, then? Well, not even the hamburger we had for lunch, nor the keyboards at our fingers; only our own thoughts can be proven by each one of us to exist.
Stensrud 2
On page 128 (the only paragraph) Kesey masterfully weaves his own personal experiences and his imagination to create a unique epiphany for both the readers and characters. I believe Ken Kesey pulls many elements of his own life and of the characters lives out in just one short paragraph allowing this work to seem singular and unalterable. After reading the excerpt multiple times (although not an expert) I have analyzed it to the best of my ability. Kesey writes “Nobody complains about the fog. I know why, now: as bad as it is, you can slip back in it and feel safe.” Kesey, having spent time working in an insane asylum and being on LSD himself, knows the ramifications these drugs and being bound up can do to a persons mind. Not only does Bromden lose his self-confidence, but he also loses hope. To me, Kesey is McMurphy. By writing this paragraph, he has stepped out of a social norm and has tried to make a statement. McMurphy does the same by causing a raucous in the ward. He wants to bring back hope, and confidence to the outcasted men. Often McMurphy’s actions seem questionable and heinous, but after reading this paragraph Kesey has convinced me that McMurphy’s deeds are for the good, along with his own. “He keeps trying to drag us out of the fog, out in the open where we would be easy to get at.” The last sentence of this paragraph shows what a vulnerable state the men of the ward are in. McMurphy hopefully will allow the men to lose their womanly insecurities and remember that they are fully capable of opulence. I would describe Ken Kesey as a noteworthy writer. He allows the readers to dig into his novel, provoking thoughtful questions and concerns that we may or may not discover the answer to. His touch-and-go personality has truly made him one of a kind.
Van Egdom 5
My excerpt comes from paragraph 4 on page 28. Ken Kesey describes nurse Ratched’s ward as a “smooth, accurate, precision-made machine,” which makes me imagine her typing on a computer. To her, the patients are only keys on a keyboard. Kesey’s description can only come from him—nobody else could imagine such a brutally cold overseer for a mental ward. Everybody can relate to this characterization, because there are many persnickety individuals in the world. Kesey could even be talking about me. At times, little things askew will enact my obsessive-compulsive behavior, and I will need to immediately fix it. The brutally honest depiction of nurse Ratched reflects the Adrian Monk in all of us.
Kesey’s inventiveness remains unmatched. Everybody in the world must submit to this calm, yet steely whirlwind of a force known as the Big Nurse. Animosity and impatience embody her daily emotions. Also, Kesey says she is a “little white knot of tight-smiled fury,” which could be describing her as one of the furies from mythology. The furies were old hags that listen to complaints and punish wrongdoers. Ratched gets everybody “’adjusted to surroundings,’” which shows her perception that everything in the world must be fixed. If the Inside does not conform to her standards, they must change; if the Outside does not conform to her standards, they must change. She does not leave anything unchanged. Kesey’s portrayal of nurse Ratched could not be duplicated.
Throughout the book, readers can see influences of Kesey’s personal experiences. He worked the night shift at a hospital, and even talked to some of the more mentally “unstable” patients. Not surprisingly, he took LSD and some of his encounters with patients were under the influence of this hallucinogenic drug. Kesey would have seen the truth of hospitals, especially how the workers treated the medically insane—as if they were not true humans.
Presler 2
I feel that Kesey is the only person who could have written paragraphs 1-3 on page 76--the Santa Claus excerpt. Without question, it takes a truly unique (even, if I may be so bold, a little insane?) mind to imagine Santa Claus making his annual rounds, and then being detained at a mental hospital for six years, only to be released completely devoid of joy, plumpness, and facial hair. Perhaps the most bizarre, ambiguous passage in the first 101 pages, the Santa Claus excerpt remains concrete enough to relay an important message: something is drastically wrong with this psychiatric institution.
As I read this passage the first time, I was moved to great sadness for Jolly Old St. Nicholas, but I also felt immense sympathy for the patients of the ward, and equally intense disdain for the authorities of the hospital. In short, Kesey accomplished exactly what he wanted to accomplish. Even if Chief Bromden merely hallucinated this incident, or even if this was only a Santa doppelganger and not the real thing, the point is not lost. Nurse Ratched and her finely tuned machine are so absorbed with conformity and efficiency that they utterly destroy one of the most enduring symbols of joy and brotherly love. The occurrence makes the reader wonder what chance McMurphy has against Ratched and her co-conspirators.
Although many authors employ interruptions from the plot of the story to make a point or foreshadow later events, Kesey seems wholly original with this excerpt. Moreover, the flamboyant author perfectly places the deviation after an inordinately lengthy chapter; he captures, or recaptures, the reader's attention with this totally unexpected anecdote. Often, I wonder where authors find the inspiration to write about certain topics. Assuredly, this is one of those situations. I am bamboozled (yes, bamboozled) by Kesey's unprecedented methods.
Pearce 1
The paragraph that I chose from this book that only Ken Kesey could have written is the last paragraph on page 86.
This paragraph is in the middle of Chief Bromden’s hallucination into hell when he should be sleeping. This only occurs after he doesn’t take a certain pill before going to bed. In this paragraph, Bromden finishes his decent into hell. Once he gets down there, he is still in his bed. He can’t hear anything, not even the people around him breathing. Then he realizes that this is because there is a very loud drumming going on. He tries to take off the bed sheet, but this proves to be unsuccessful. As soon as that happens, the wall that is next to him lifts up to reveal a huge room with many different machines inside. There are shirtless men in this room with the machines and they are working with the machines. At this point, the paragraph ends.
Only Ken Kesey could have written this paragraph because of what it is about and because of the language used in it. The subject of the paragraph makes it so only Kesey could have written it. No other writer talks about a 6’7” Indian who has paranoid schizophrenia. Let alone one that is in the middle of a hallucination that is seeing him fall into his own version of hell after not taking a pill before going to sleep. No other writer would think of this idea, let alone write about it. Kesey’s use of descriptive language in the paragraph is amazing. The sheet is choking Bromden; the sound Bromden can hear is a drumming; Bromden clawing at the sheets; the room was “swarming with sweating, shirtless men running up and down catwalks, faces blank and dreamy in firelight throw from a hundred blast furnaces.” All of thing descriptive language paints a vivid picture of what it is like to be there and you can visualize Bromden in this room.
This paragraph shows Kesey’s inventiveness and imagination as he was able to invent and imagine this crazy scene in this book. Not only this, but he was able to perfectly describe this scene as well.
West 1
The paragraphs I chose as the only ones that Ken Kesey could have written are the first and second paragraphs on page 104.
In the first paragraph, he rants about the clock being a destructive machine the whole book, but now he says how the clock is lying by saying it is only seven fifteen, and that they have only been sitting there for fifteen minutes. Ken Kesey talks about the clock in this book a lot, making it a big deal. When he was in an institution, time must have seemed to have stop. The days must have seemed endless, like the clock was not moving. He talks about watching the black boys all the time: taking the Vegetables away, cleaning their trays, and hosing them off. Kesey is telling us through this seemingly time stopped world that when he was in there, he was bored almost to death, and it seemed like the boredom would never end.
In the second paragraph, Kesey is portraying himself through McMurphy—bored and looking for excitement. When Kesey was in the institution, and the clock seemed to not move, he would have looked for anything to do, including causing mischief. In the second paragraph, he gets tired of being bored and comes up with the idea to fling food at the clock. This could illustrate his frustration with his boredom and the assault on the thing that he thinks is causing it—the lying clock.
Polasky 5
Though I believe Ken Kesey's soul holds evident within the majority of the novel, one particular section caught my eye. On page 77 in the second complete paragraph, Kesey discusses in depth about how lethargically the clock ticks within the ward, according to Chief Bromden. I commend Kesey on how he meticulously depicts the torture of time purely decaying, which many of us have experienced when we have nothing to accomplish or not much to ponder on. However, I believe this selection of the story contains a double meaning to both the Chief and Kesey. As Kesey discusses how Nurse Ratched will “turn that dial to a dead stop and freeze the sun there on the screen so it don’t move a scant hair for weeks, so not a leaf on a tree or a blade of grass in the pasture shimmers,” I believe Kesey feels the same way about his own life. Once I read through the passage a few times, I unearthed a parallel that could only be linked to the ideas of Kesey. I firmly believe Kesey felt that God, or a God-like figure, was controlling the time of his activity, and he did not agree with the pace at which it moved. The fun events in his life were few and far between. His only way out of this lackluster existence was through drug usage, which he inferred to in the book: “a clear chemical gas in through the vents, and the whole ward is set solid when the gas changes into plastic.” What made me confident in this theory, however was the line standing alone after the paragraph that stated “Lord knows how long we hang this way.” The reference to the Lord only confirmed what had sparked my interpretation. This shocking paragraph allowed me to view how sad of a life Chief Bromden had, and also lets me glimpse into how lonely and melancholy Ken Kesey’s life really was.
Heidbrink 1
Pete Bancini's outburst during the meeting on page 52-54 is a passage that is unique to an author like Ken Kesey.
When I read this passage for the first time, I read it literally, thinking that Pete was just a tired old man until he said something profound, "I was born dead. I can't help it.... You got chances...I been dead fifty-five years." Only someone like Kesey, who has spent a lot of time in mental institutions, can understand how grateful people on the outside should feel for being blessed with fully functioning bodies.
I think that some of Kesey's personality shines through in Pete as well. Like Pete Bancini, Kesey wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Kesey worked long enough to realize that he was tired of the way the machine ran things. Rather than calling the system baloney and laying waste to it with a wrecking ball hand like Pete, Kesey spent part of his life escaping the system and doing what he pleased. I think that Kesey has more that he sees wrong with the world, but like Pete, the system drugged him and he slipped back into a stupor.
The visual aspect of Pete's outburst is also unique to Kesey's writing style. Only someone who has experimented with drugs and experienced hallucinations first hand could concoct the visions that Bromden has. This particular instance is interesting because it seems that Pete's anger, frustration, and hatred for the system manifest themselves in his hand, turning it into a wrecking ball or a mace that he uses to destroy part of the machine. Visions that like this that Kesey uses throughout the book add a lot of meaning because they make emotions palpable. Only Kesey could use his experiences with experimental drugs to create moments like this that add more meaning to the book. With these instances, Kesey takes figurative language to the next level, and I love it.
Heidbrink 1
Pete Bancini's outburst during the meeting on page 52-54 is a passage that is unique to an author like Ken Kesey.
When I read this passage for the first time, I read it literally, thinking that Pete was just a tired old man until he said something profound, "I was born dead. I can't help it.... You got chances...I been dead fifty-five years." Only someone like Kesey, who has spent a lot of time in mental institutions, can understand how grateful people on the outside should feel for being blessed with fully functioning bodies.
I think that some of Kesey's personality shines through in Pete as well. Like Pete Bancini, Kesey wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Kesey worked long enough to realize that he was tired of the way the machine ran things. Rather than calling the system baloney and laying waste to it with a wrecking ball hand like Pete, Kesey spent part of his life escaping the system and doing what he pleased. I think that Kesey has more that he sees wrong with the world, but like Pete, the system drugged him and he slipped back into a stupor.
The visual aspect of Pete's outburst is also unique to Kesey's writing style. Only someone who has experimented with drugs and experienced hallucinations first hand could concoct the visions that Bromden has. This particular instance is interesting because it seems that Pete's anger, frustration, and hatred for the system manifest themselves in his hand, turning it into a wrecking ball or a mace that he uses to destroy part of the machine. Visions that like this that Kesey uses throughout the book add a lot of meaning because they make emotions palpable. Only Kesey could use his experiences with experimental drugs to create moments like this that add more meaning to the book. With these instances, Kesey takes figurative language to the next level, and I love it.
Dreyer 2
“I believe that with the advent of acid, we discovered a new way to think, and it has to do with piecing together new thoughts in your mind. Why is it that people think it's so evil? What is it about it that scares people so deeply, even the guy that invented it, what is it? Because they're afraid that there's more to reality than they have ever confronted. That there are doors that they're afraid to go in, and they don't want us to go in there either, because if we go in we might learn something that they don't know. And that makes us a little out of their control.”
I discovered this quote by Ken Kesey, which the author stated in a BBC documentary, entitled The Beyond Within: The Rise and Fall of LSD (1987). This quote really made me wonder about Kesey’s motives for writing One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Even though he is talking about LSD and what it does to individual’s minds, the message behind his quote, I believe, can be true for everyone, on acid or not.
The passage from the novel that I though went along with this quote really well, and why Ken Kesey is the only one who could have written it comes from page 135 paragraph number five. In this paragraph Chief Bromden is describing everything floating past him in the fog before the group therapy session. He sees an old Chronic, Colonel Matterson, float by. He hears all the strange metaphors Matterson has been reciting for years and has finally figured them out. “Now, at last, I see what he’s saying. I’m trying to hold him for one last look to remember him and that’s what makes me look hard enough to understand….You’re making sense, old man, a sense of your own. You’re not crazy the way they think. Yes… I see…” In this paragraph Kesey is very similar to Chief Bromden. Kesey realizes that in society, we have all conformed not to discover more, because we are afraid. Bromden has started to realize this too. He realizes that even when you are trapped in the fog, some things can still pull you back out. I believe that Kesey created this novel using several of his personal experiences and ideologies. By representing himself within several characters throughout the novel, he is able to show the journey one makes as they escape from the fog of society.
Smith 7
Page 128
Any author could have written this paragraph, however, Kesey is the only creative writer that would have constructed the type of background that goes into this single paragraph. Throughout the entire book there are several double meanings and hallucinations that create perplexity between characters, and also the readers. On page 128, Kesey is portraying McMurphy as the betrayer. He attempts to conduct the extremely chary men into the fog, similar to a deer caught in the headlights. Chief Bromden and everyone else learned to not complain about the fog because it tolerates the patient’s fears and allows them to seep into the fog as if it were a refuge. Only Kesey is capable of composing this paragraph because he didn’t believe these patients were senseless, but rather, he believed that the world didn’t and wouldn’t accept their way of thinking or behavior. Even though these men were in an institution, Kesey trusted that their mind processed more than an average person because their eyes were open to more than just reality.
At times, while reading this book, I concluded that Kesey doesn’t have any answers. There are certainly many references and descriptions leading to answers that question who, why and how these men are the way they are, and what their overall purpose is. It makes sense to know that while writing this book, Kesey volunteered to experiment the hallucinogenic drugs, and also received tales from other hallucinated patients. One could say that he was within himself at that time. He understood and experienced the life of an “outsider” while looking in. Why aren’t we all capable of seeing more than what is on the surface? What causes us to be deaf and blind? Kesey was obviously trying to make a statement. He was informing society how to think instead of what to think.
Wright 1
The second paragraphs on page 76, Chief’s observations around him have exceeded reality, without limitations. The real world no longer existed in each patient. Nurse Ratched has manipulated time, date, weather, year, and reality. For most of the patients, and Kesey himself, time is misplaced and forgotten. Kesey implies the quality of life for the individuals before the institution did not simply make their life worth living. They lived aimlessly day-to-day, waiting for even the smallest burst of freedom to create an expansion inside the fog. As the grayness slowly disperses and reveals reality the view shows optimistic possibilities for some, but others actually prefer to be gassed inside the fog than living in a world of hatred, corruption, and lies. Hidden and trapped in a dense safe blanket of fog, the men let the massive dirt cloud consumed them; they know as long as the stay inside the fog, nothing and no one will hurt them. The fog has become as real to them as the breezy ocean tides, the tickling sensation of the grassy meadows, and the dimness of a flickering candle wick. While some where attempting to escape, Nurse Ratched controls time; how fast it can pass on by, or how dreadfully slow it may tick on. "The Big Nurse is able to set the wall clock at whatever speed she wants by just turning one of those dials in the steel door; she takes a notion to hurry things up, she turns the speed up, and those hands whip around that disk like spokes in a wheel.” Kesey’s intentions throughout the novel remain consistent; we are simply a time bomb, waiting to explode and eventually disintegrate into the air. Sitting and waiting will do nothing; we must stand up our own Big Nurse (whether that may be a mental conflict inside an individual or physically corrupted by another human being) and prove that our life shall not, and will not be controlled by anyone else. But, if we give in and allow others to determine how we live the remainder of our years, minutes, or seconds… The acquired memories, knowledge, understanding, and compassion will be forever vanished and forgotten. And that is a true and utter waste of a life.
Gacke 2
After diving into his wonderfully written novel, Ken Kesey seems to be a mysterious yet magnificent individual. By speaking through Chief Bromden, his words’ meaning magnifies. The half-Indian narrator is potently observant, and his hallucinations, though not exactly real, speak his mind for the torture the patients are living through. On page 151, in the third and fourth paragraphs, Chief Bromden describes the messes he must clean while the staff holds meetings, led by the despicable Miss Ratched. “The messy affairs” he works so diligently to get rid of may not be the tangible green slime Chief describes them as, but they do exist in the manipulative, degrading ways of the hospital. In the two paragraphs I have listed, Kesey creatively builds on the character we have come to know the most. With each new hallucination, we come to know Chief Bromden a little more—that he is intelligent and attentive despite his inability to discern reality from imagination. If he were not intelligent, he would not have been able to listen to the staff meetings. He performs his dumb/deaf act so successfully that “the only thing they’d miss if [he] didn’t show up would be the sponge and the water bucket floating around.”
Kesey’s life experiences are definitely unique and helped create this equally unique novel. His experience working on a psychiatric ward evoked much of the ideas behind this book. The staff, mainly Nurse Ratched, tear the patients apart. During the staff meetings, Chief describes that they talk about a patient for so long that he materializes in flesh, only to be “smeared around in an awful mess before they were finished.” Chief recognizes that the staff meetings are where the mental oppression of the patients begins, and then is carried out during the group meetings and the monotonous schedule. Ken Kesey, much too rebellious to just create a well written novel, is metaphorically writing about a bigger problem. Oppression exists everywhere in the world, but people seem to be too afraid to run from the domineering ways of society. Through Chief Bromden’s hallucinations, Kesey might be encouraging people to thrash out of the monotonous schedule of society and reject the all-powerful “Combine.”
Klamm 2
The excerpt I chose is on page 4, paragraph 4. This is one of the first times we know for certain that Chief Bromden is hallucinating. Bromden describes Nurse Ratched as, “she blows up bigger and bigger, big as a tractor.” Nurse Ratched obviously does not have superhuman powers of expansion and this lets us know Bromden might not be thinking quite correctly. I think this and many of the other obvious and subtle hallucinations could only have been written by Ken Kesey himself or someone who experience a very similar life. Kesey was well versed in all types of hallucinations. He was a guinea pig for the United States military and participated in their study code named: Project MKULTRA. In this study he took many psychoactive drugs, especially LSD and Cocaine. He then experience more hallucinations than most people can even consider possible and I believe his experiences during this study greatly helped Bromden's hallucinations to be believable and as authentic as they can be. He likely even used some of his own hallucinations as inspiration for Chief’s own imaginings. He likely was on acid and other types of drugs as this book was being written which also adds authenticity and the real feeling of disorientation and confusion we can feel while reading his book. What’s even more interesting than the obvious hallucinations we encounter in Kesey’s book are the subtle hidden hallucinations that we can never know if they are real or only a figment of Bromden’s imagination. For example, was Santa Clause, or at least his impersonator, really caught in the trap of the mental hospital or was that something Chief imagined or thought he remembered? We can never really know and that leads to a certain level of skepticism that one experiences while reading the book. We cannot fully trust what Bromden says even, “when the fog clears.”
Knudtson 5
My excerpt comes from earlier in the book on page 49, paragraph 2. It is indubitable that Ken Kesey wrote this as we see authenticity of the words and events in the paragraph. I really love the descriptions and visualizations in this section as he show the clockwork of the meetings, hearing the theory of therapeutic community. Chief Bromden hears this so many times (presumably, every time) he can “repeat it forward and backwards!” This also shows how they encourage “helping your fellow” compared to squealing (or even tattling, more of a childlike version) This also proves authenticity with Ken Kesey’s imagination he provided for the visual text in this paragraph. Ken Kesey describes the reason of the meetings with the theory of therapeutic community, I can visualize probing the unconscious, even though it is not normally visualized, in aid to return them to the street because there is no room for secrets among each other. His visual works in this novel are unique in their own because of his experience at many insane asylums watching, observing, studying many institutionalized vegetables and acutes. Ken Kesey’s inventiveness is seen as he knows the process, using irony with democratic ties to the psychiatric ward. He states in this section the ward is a democratic, free neighborhoods that is a model of the outside world, following their rules will lead to your own place outside of the building! A place where none of them get to go. This excerpt was expertly crafted by Ken Kesey and his unique use of authenticity, inventiveness, and imagination, no other could replicate this and let it work so smoothly and full of intent.
Long 5
Ken Kesey’s novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” is unlike any book I have ever read. The way Kesey portrays all the patients and staff within the insane asylum gives me an eerie feeling while reading. One excerpt I found very intriguing to me is located on page 113, paragraph 3. The last sentence on this page I include in the excerpt as well. Kesey writes about the fog machine—when the fog gets thick enough “you’re lost in it and can let go, and be safe again.” With all of which Kesey had experienced before writing this novel, this phrase describes his situation very well. Kesey participated in the United States military and their study: Project MKULTRA. Having taken many drugs – such as LSD and cocaine – Kesey experienced a great number of hallucinations. This being said, Kesey knows what Bromden is going through when he writes about his hallucinations, which makes them a lot more believable. Having no control over this illusion of the mind, Kesey writes that Bromden feels trapped; however, when the fog is thick enough, he is safe again. He no longer has to worry of the other patients or nurses seeing him. This, for instance, could be one of the hallucinations Kesey had while on LSD, turned into a hallucination that Bromden has. In the ward, all of the patients are dictated. They are told what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. After being there for as long as Bromden, it starts to become a routine. He never gets a break and is always doing what he is told. When the fog comes on (during his hallucinations), he feels it is not a punishment but rather a chance to escape for a while, let go, and be safe again.
Smith, 5
During the festival time of a merry Christmas, all the jolliness and affection is shared throughout the entire town. It is common to heed to a cliché story coming from a rambling mouth of child that claims they saw Santa...until Ken Kesey exploits an offbeat adventure about Santa visiting an institution for the acute and chronic victims of insanity. On page 76, beginning promptly in the 1st paragraph and following 2 other short paragraphs containing details and speaking impromptu. Ken Kesey created this excerpt to be the best--yet the worst--of times. Santa trots into the institution, not knowing he would be captured by the black guys nor was remaining in the institution for 6 long years even a topic on hand.
Ken Kesey had this all symbolically planned out. Why did Santa enter into an organization for the crazy? Was it to drop off presents, as he is annually depicted for a peregrination in one night, bestowed with presents? Or is it emblematically correct for Santa to be entering into a crazy institution? With Kesey’s thinking, it is fanatical to believe in Santa; he is desperate to saunter into a place for the physco—where he belongs!
Kesey concludes this passage blandly stating that he left and was ‘clean-shaven and skinny as a pole.’ With certainty, Mr. Ken Kesey put this straight foward that he was bloated with jolliness and happiness—producing the round belly that Santa is known for. Fast forwarding to 6 years later, being captive in this machinery institution, Santa departs skinny as a pole—the gaiety and bliss has been shed off his body, remolding into an emaciated (and heartbreaking and distressed) Santa.
Ken Kesey discretely adds inimitable and sole details and scenarios (arrest from other authors)—leaving a mimesis.
Berberich 7
The excerpt I chose comes from a page that will be wrote about a lot. Page 86 2nd and 3rd paragraph. At first, while reading these paragraphs I was slightly confused to what was happening in the story. The authenticity of theses paragraphs had me at the edge of my seat. Floors dropping like elevators did not seem realistic to me. This evidence is made clear to the fact Kesey had to be making up this part of the story. He was very good at placing me in the bed of Chief Bromden, at the time, to experience what it was like to fall asleep without a sleeping pill. He envisions the floor jolting, the walls sliding up and down(like curtains), and endless rows of machines. He sees Blastic become strung up to the ceiling like a fish with a hook poked through his calcaneal tendon. The imaginations Kesey had to surmise to create these paragraphs is extensive. What amazed me was he went as far as loyalty with friends or possibly there were not friends--Bromden watches a man run at full speed and suddenly "drop in his tracks" with his friends ramming him head first into the furnace. Chief experiences so many things that could not be realistic in anyone's life except to someone who is creating the scene. The inventiveness with in theses paragraphs is far more than what a real person could witness without the book being fiction. Without these paragraphs in the book the reader would not accumulate the full affect of being placed in the Ward. We would not know what Bromden has gone through and what he must do to fall asleep every night.
Murtha 5
I will be analyzing page 126 and paragraph three. This small chapter found in part one is about a painting that is one the wall in the wing. It is a painting of a man fly fishing. Chief explains to the readers that the painting is unrealistic because the waters would not be good for the sport. The scenery reminds him of the Ochocos near Paineville. Because Chief connects it to a place we can infer that he has been to this place he is imagining. In the paragraph he talks about being in the picture and sitting on the rock but still being able to see the doctor because the painting faces the wall. He talks about the cold wind that is coming down from the mountain peaks. In the painting he is relaxing but in real life he is tense because he is constantly trying to hide.
Ken Kesey would have wrote this to explain just how trapped Chief feels. When we sit in class we often day dream about being some place where we can relax and be lackadaisical. But people that have mental disorders to the same as we do but they have more extreme cases like putting themselves in a painting. It is clever of Kesey to make this connection to the readers and help us to realize that even if they have many trouble they are just as human as us. I believe this is one of the themes of the book. He continues to discriminate and segregate society in almost every possible way, much like many people do today. But his objective I believe is to bring everyone together and connect our lives to those that are different then us. If this is not is initial purpose I would be amazed. I will have learned a lesson because of Kesey and this paragraph that has awoken me to different opportunities.
Paul 2
Reading this novel is challenging at times to picture due to my lack of experience. Often I questioned if Kesey had a background with mental illnesses or how he could describe these event in massive precise detail, or if the hallucinations were even accurate. On page 113, paragraph 3 Kesey vividly explains one of Chief Bromden’s several hallucinations. He mentions a feeling of hopelessness being engulfed in fog; yet the fog is described as a shelter protecting Chief. Situations of this sort cannot be explained without knowing and understanding what it is like to have this type of illness. After doing some research on Ken Kesey I found that he does have a past with mental illnesses. Working as a night aide at the Menlo Park Veterans Hospital explains his understanding of PTSD (Posttraumatic stress disorder); this experience allows him to demonstrate the symptoms realistically. Not only that, but also allows him to accurately explain the environment and how things work. He also sees firsthand how the patients are treated and act. While at the veterans hospital he volunteered to take part in a highly secretive study of psychoactive drugs, such as: LSD, cocaine, and even mescaline. Because of his experience with hallucinogens he is most qualified to create them in his writing. Being a part of a mental hospital and mingling with the patients himself, he created opinions to incorporate as well. Ken Kesey believes that these patients were not insane but that society had neglected to accept them for not behaving normal, or what is engraved in our heads as “normal.” Which is similar to the whole idea of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Without Kesey’s experiences, this book could not have been written in his unique and original point of view, and would not have as much significance.
Rohrbach 5
My favorite excerpt, comes from the last paragraph of chapter one on page eight. In this short paragraph, Bromden lets his audience know that he is about to explain all he has experienced in the hospital. He tells the reader: "... You think the guy telling this is ranting and raving... You think this is too horrible to have happened..." Then he continues to reassure us with probably the most ingenious sentence I've ever heard, and I applaud Kesey for it: "But it's the truth even if it didn't happen." Never have truer words been spoken, and only could they have been spoke by someone who has experienced internal and mental hardship. Bromden is Schizophrenic, and this illness makes him see things that are not really there. Kesey is trying to tell his readers that despite the fact that it is all in the Chief's head, it is no less real. An example of this would be if you were confronted by a bear. You would feel the fear, you would feel the helplessness, you would try your hardest to get away, even if the bear wasn't necessarily tearing limb from limb at that very moment and you get away from the bear in one piece. Now whether this had happened to you in real life, or if it was all in your head, it no longer makes a difference because you've experienced the same thing either way. In this case, the bear might as well have been real. This excerpt was so authentic, so raw, it could have only came from Kesey. While the rest of this book is interesting, and I'm sure the ending will be great, this will always stick with me. It was real, it was genuine, and I deeply admire Kesey for opening himself up, and personally reaching out to his audience.
Anderson 5
The excerpt I chose that Kesey wrote is on page 142, paragraph 8. Kesey is the only one that could have written this because he truly puts all of his own thoughts and feelings into it. This excerpt is associated with the part when McMurphy is trying to get Nurse Ratched to agree to let the boys watch the World Series games on TV. When they vote on this issue, the hands in the air add up to being one short from the majority. This realization causes McMurphy to go around to each of the Chronics, yelling at them to just raise their hands. Chief, who is just watching this all happen, does not realize that after McMurphy tells him raise his hand, it suddenly starts to rise. He claims that McMurphy did something to his arm the day he entered the ward, because it feels as if he is not doing this act himself. By the way Miss Ratched is looking at him, he knows that he will be in trouble but he can't stop this force pulling his hand up. Chief thinks that this force raising his hand is being caused by wires which McMurphy tied to his arms. He senses that McMurphy is trying to get him out of this fog the Chief is in. Chief wants to believe that is was all McMurphy’s doing but then comes to the realization that he did this all himself. It was him that put his arm up. He is the one that wanted to go against Miss Ratched. This excerpt is showing how he is beginning to go against and think differently than the way the used to before McMurphy came. This could have only been written by Kesey because he has experienced this feeling of not being in control of himself at times. By blaming it on McMurphy, he may not seem as crazy as he might actually be, but when he comes to realize that he actually rose his hand on his own he seems disappointed because he knew he was just imagining McMurphy use wires.
“The rabbits accept their role in the ritual and recognize the wolf as the strong. In defense, the rabbit becomes sly and frightened and elusive and he digs holes and hides when the wolf is about. And he endures, he goes on. He knows his place. He most certainly doesn’t challenge the wolf to combat. Now, would that be wise? Would it?”
Page 38.
When Harding explained the patients powerlessness to McMurphy on such simple terms, I understood better what it would be like to be in a mental hospital, that hospital. It scared me that that is how the patients feel about a place that was supposed to cure them- it was eating them alive. It was holding them hostage and there was absolutely nothing they could do. Because they were rabbit and who are they to stand up to the mighty wolf. I think Ken Kesey did not only want readers to understand that there are rabbits and wolves in a psychiatric institution— but also in the real world, our world. Many of us have often felt like bunnies at some point in our lives—feeling trapped, like we don’t matter, like we have no say, that no one cares, that we have to run. Sometimes I think we are our own wolves. And that is what Kesey wanted to evoke— that you should have to run; you should fight, because running doesn’t change things. I think Kesey is gearing us up for a fight. A fight that is not fair, but what in life is fair. Kesey doesn’t want people to accept where society places them. He doesn’t want people to hide in fear. And he doesn’t want people to merely survive—he wants them to live. And how can one truly live if they base their life upon other people, other people’s opinions, and other people’s strengths. Kesey wants the rabbits to realize their own strengths and find their place in the world, they place they want to be, not the place they are put in. I think it is also important that Kesey put this in terms of animals because it is a severely animalistic trait that humans do not question. It is also important that Mr. Harding, the proclaimed craziest man in the hospital, spoke those words to the man challenging him for the title of the craziest man in the hospital. It shows that even though you may feel at the top or your species, you would not dare challenge any species above them in the food chain. But humans do not have a food chain. Except the one we created. And I feel that only Kesey could have evoked all that pain and suffering and shine a light unto what humanity has to done to each other, into a story about a pig and a wolf.
Grage 2
In paragraph three on page 137, Mr. Bromden talks about how he has lost himself in the fog. Bromden says that he feels dead and that he doesn’t feel any pain.
I decided to choose this paragraph because reading it made me realize how saying he feels dead and how he doesn’t feel any pain are usually are descriptions of people who have experienced an overdose on some sort of drug, which in Mr. Kesey’s case was LSD. Ken Kasey was a volunteer medical guinea pig for a secret military program beginning in the 1050’s. This program was a U.S. government human research operation experimenting in the behavioral engineering of humans. They tested LSD, cocaine, aMT, psilocybin, and mescaline on their volunteers. With Kesey’s background it makes a lot of sense on how he developed the story and how he could come up with some of the illusions in the novel. Kesey is the only person who could have written the paragraph I chose because his background gives him the capability to do so (with drugs such as LSD). In this paragraph Bromden talks about how he loses himself in the fog. For Bromden the fog means safety, but if you were to look at this from Kesey’s point of view he could have related it to his past meaning how he got “lost” in the smoke when he would do drugs, losing control of his actions and understanding of his environment. Kesey might not have been the greatest role model, but if he wasn’t the way he was this novel would have never existed and American Literature would not be where it is today because of that. His imagination is inordinate; it takes a lot of concentration to understand what the true meaning behind his writing, which is why this novel is a classic.
Berg 2
The excerpt that I chose to write about is from the first three paragraphs on page seventy-six. This part of the novel is when Chief Bromden is telling the readers that a “fat man with a beard” came to the ward and was coerced by the black boys to stay for six years until he is “clean-shaven and skinny as a pole”. This man appears to have been Santa, merry and happy to be alive, but when he leaves he is just another patient leaving the hospital, leaving the hospital after being put through the giant machine in charge of making the uncivilized fit for civilization. Although most people assume this was happening in the Chief’s head with the man truly being Santa, but the man could have been a patient that reminded Chief Bromden of the merry man he had once heard of as a young child.
Only the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey, has been seemingly successful in realistically writing from the viewpoint of a person with schizophrenia. He added Santa Claus to enhance the story and to make sure that the readers continuously understand they still need to be distinguishing between what is happening inside Chief Bromden’s head and what is actually happening. Kesey was full of inventiveness when keeping the attention of the readers throughout the novel. From adding Santa Claus to the descriptions he gives of each of the characters he is able to make sure that the readers are remaining on their toes with every page turn.
McGee 5
“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” Page 3 paragraphs 7 and 8 through Page 4 paragraph 1
On Page 3 Kesey does a wonderful job describing Chief and the black boy’s relationship. Chief states that he is extremely cagey. He says he has been tricking the workers of the mental institution into believing he was deaf and dumb. The black boys thinking that Chief is deaf and dumb have led to Chief knowing secrets that were not meant to be heard. Kesey was brilliant in writing this because Chief now makes the perfect narrator. He sees and hears a lot of things that help the readers understand life in the mental institution.
On Page 4 Kesey uses great imagery to describe the Big Nurse. The Big Nurse is described in such great lengths that I feel that she looks like Principle Trunchbull from Matilda. When the Big Nurse’s lips and finger tips are described as a “Funny orange. Like the tip of a soldering iron. Color so hot or so cold if she touches you with it you can’t tell which.” she really comes out as the evil woman she is. Also in the paragraph, it shows that the Big Nurse has no ordinary female items but just a big bag full of tools. He states that she has “wheels and gears, cogs polished to a hard glitter, tiny pills that gleam like porcelain, needles, forceps, watchmakers’ pliers, rolls of copper wire….” Kesey makes the Big Nurse appalling without saying that she is evil—he just shows her traits.
Baum 5
"There's a shipment of frozen parts come in downstairs--hearts and kidneys and brains and the like." Kesey is a master at wording his sentences in such a way it makes you think twice. Throughout this entire novel I have vacillated back and forth between fully comprehending what I read, and being down right confused by his illusory statements. The excerpt I have chosen can be found on pages 128 to 129. There are only two paragraphs total but I believe only two are needed. The drastic change between reading pages and pages in one chapter, to only reading one paragraph struck me as odd. After rereading the paragraphs I realized how clever Kesey truly is.
The excerpt showed me how mentally insane our main character Chief Bromden is. The fog has become more than just a mental mirage. It is a safety tactic for Chief. If you are in the fog, no one can see you. No one can harm you. This paragraph also showed me how McMurphy is trying to help the patients. He is trying to drag them out of their comfort zones before it is too late. The combine has gotten to them, but that does not mean the Big Nurse has won. McMurphy fights for the patients' rights and stands up for them, even when they do not return the favor. I am becoming a strong supporter of McMurphy and his heinous ways.
Kesey's experience with drugs such as LSD makes his writing stand out from other well known authors such as Golding. He knows the ins and outs of what the drug can do to you and how it affects your mind and thought process. His personal experience adds interesting twists forcing you to read more. Kesey's writing is wholly original. Kesey is the only one who can come up with something so brilliantly insane.
Fritz 5
One paragraph I found very interesting was on 129 where it is the only paragraph located on the page. Within the story we know chief Bromden is Schizophrenic. To describe what a schizophrenic truly goes through is a tough thing to describe. This is how I know only Kensey himself could have composed this paragraph. One could compare the effects of drugs to schizophrenia. They both cause hallucinations—to imagine something that truly isn’t there. Ken Kensey was involved in a United States military study where he agreed to take many drugs, some being LSD and cocaine. This being how he related to Bromden’s schizophrenia.
Within the paragraph chief Bromden describes frozen kidneys and brains being shipped downstairs. Any sane human being would know that this would never happen. He also composes a sentence that caught my attention, “What makes people so impatient is what I can’t figure; all the guy had to do was wait.” This statement shows how much Kensey had gone through. One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Nest is not some normal novel about the mentally ill. It portrays society as a just as it was, greedy. We see society getting so caught up in the greediness that they forget about others. If what people do does not follow societies rules, you will get sent away. Just like in Cukoo’s Nest, if Ms. Ratched didn’t like what you were doing, off you went to another ward…
Kesey was, if nothing else, an extraordinarily interesting man. High school and college wrestling champ, University of Oregon graduate and promptly a member of Stanford University's creative writing program, and then..participant of Project MKULTRA, a military experiment in which Kesey took a number of psychoactive drugs, including LSD, mushrooms, mescaline, and DMT. In the mid '60's, Kesey threw "Acid Tests": imagine The Grateful Dead playing, strobe lights dancing, and acid aplenty. Kesey was even the subject of a rather famous book titled "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test", written by Tom Wolfe, a pioneer (along with Hunter S. Thompson, another "acid-head" and attendee of at least one Acid Test) of New Journalism in the late '60's.
Kesey’s experimentation with psychedelics had at least two effects: he became a major figure and role model in the counterculture movement of the late ‘60’s, and he gained insight through his experiences that allowed him to visualize subjects otherwise inaccessible. Undoubtedly, Kesey never could have written anything like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest had he never experimented with drugs; maybe he could’ve written something just as excellent, but no way could he have written a novel so understanding of people who were, as most would dub them, insane. Aided by his former work at a mental hospital in Oregon (where, incidentally, Cuckoo’s Nest takes place) and his consumption of psychedelic drugs, Kesey conjured images previously absent from literature. For instance, on page 117, paragraphs one and two speak about a fog surrounding the other residents, a fog affecting memory and disorienting Bromden. His description of Bromden’s fear is keen; it seems as if Kesey must’ve experienced something like this to describe it so well. This isn’t the most powerful imagery in the novel, but to even come up with an idea like the fog that is clearly nonexistent except in Bromden’s imagination required much insight. It’s highly unlikely that anyone, even someone with an intellect as keen as Kesey’s, could possess the capacity for imagery like this without undergoing a process that led to an altered state of consciousness.
Dykstra 5
One excerpt from this book that I felt only Kesey could have written is the two paragraphs contained on pages 128-129. This is a very strange part in the book, as Kesey halts the normal flow of the narrator's thoughts by abruptly making two chapters each only one paragraph long. It is very atypical for authors to do this, especially in books that are considered to be classics, and I feel that only Kesey would have the fearless audacity to do so. This is clearly meant to be a very poignant part in the book, as it shows how Chief's delusions are getting so much worse, and readers must question his reliability as a narrator. The first paragraph discusses how the "fog" is getting thicker, and how it has come to make Chief feel safe. The last sentence, a sentence which really struck me, shows how Chief Bromden is beginning to feel safer in the fog, and does not want McMurphy and his antics to force him out of it. The second paragraph is equally, if not more, disturbing. Chief Bromden believes that a shipment of human organs has come into the ward, although he still cannot see through the fog. He also informs us that Old Rawler of the Disturbed ward has killed himself in a very graphic manner. The last sentence of this paragraph has as much meaning as the former paragraph; Chief Bromden says he does not understand why Old Rawler was so anxious to kill himself, as all anyone in the hospital has to do is wait. This really struck me as something only Kesey would write; I believe he is trying to make his point by utterly shocking the reader. These two abrupt paragraphs, as well as the information they contain, certainly do so.
Henderson2
I chose the first paragraph on page 90. The paragraph is the end of Chief Bromden's vivid dream. At the end he starts explaining how his hallucinations happen. While he has them, he cannot cry and he cannot laugh. The way he wrote it obviously shows he has experienced it before. Then he goes onto say, "somebody'll drag me out of the fog and we'll be back on the ward and there won't be a sign of what went on tonight and if I was fool enough to try and tell anybody about it they'd say, Idiot, you just had a nightmare". I think another reason why he would not share this with other people in the ward is because he feels they could call him crazy and keep him there longer. I'm sure when he had hallucinations throughout his life he told some people what he was seeing, however people also thought he was crazy or had a nightmare. Kesey knows the feeling of being influenced by hard drugs such as LCD and he writes about it well in the book. This paragraph gives you a hallucination then gives you the feeling of the person experiencing the hallucination. This paragraph helped me understand the crazy part of everything. Also, after the paragraph there is one sentence that gives the reader some realization. Kesey says, "But if they don't exist, how can a man see them?" If something doesn't exist then obviously how do people see them. The devil doesn't actually exist in our living world but we have imagined him for many years. When we dream we may have nightmares of him or when we have hallucinations we may see a demon like figure arising from the floor. Just because something doesn't exist doesn't mean someone hasn't seen that something before in a dream or hallucination. I think the sudden realization that not everything is real completely changes the book.
Zahn 5
On page 88, the second paragraph, Kesey is describing what one of the workers appears to be doing in Chief Bromden’s dream. This paragraph, and like many other ones throughout this novel is extremely vivid in details. Kesey’s vivid description in this paragraph, makes me think that maybe Kesey was a little mixed up himself. His inventiveness and imagination shows in this paragraph because he was able to use words that when you read it, it made you feel a little sick. Even in his dreams, the ward is still corrupt. The worker grabs the old Vegetable Blastic by one hand and lifts him straight up like the old Vegetable weighs nothing more than a few pounds. The worker then with his other hand, drives a hook through the tendon back of the heel, and the old man is now hanging upside. Even in his dreams, the workers in the ward are still doing horrible things to people. It says that Chief did not take his pill that night, so maybe that’s why he is having this dream, but then is Chief really insane or is he just really good at faking it? Are his dreams really dreams, or is this really happening? I think that Kesey is trying to say that sometimes, dreams can feel real, but you have to be the one to decide if it’s real or not. What I may believe to be real, may not be real to someone else because we all have different perspectives. Who are we to judge someone just because they have a different perspective than us? Why do we as a society label people as insane and separate them from the rest of the world because they believe different and see different. Kesey really makes us, as readers determine if a character is sane or insane throughout the novel.
I think one of the most revealing dream sequences in this book begins on page 134. Chief Bromden becomes lost in the “fog” and fears that he may never come back. During his time in the haze he begins to see things and people differently. As people and objects emerge from the mist they becomes clear and he finally understands many previously unknown details about the other patients’ lives and why they behave like they do. When he thinks he is really gone for good he overhears a couple of the black boys saying that he has fallen asleep. Oftentimes it is unclear how conscious he is for these dreams, and whether or not he realizes they aren’t real. Bromden’s dreams are particularly interesting in that they only occur when he sleeps without medication, and that they are often brought about by the “fog” that symbolizes control. Sometimes real events occur in these dreams, but he sees them in a strange and unique manner. Even though many of them seem insane, they are often the only times that he can see the world as it truly is, even though we may not see it the same way. It is for this reason that the nurse drugs him whenever he sleeps, to keep him from realizing the oppression he is under. Kesey uses Bromden’s dreams throughout the book to explain concepts in often strange, yet fascinating ways. Few other authors use the type of imagery and symbolism Kesey does in revealing hidden aspects of the ward. I personally believe that Kesey’s extensive drug use played a key factor in helping him create these bizarre sequences. Whatever the reason, they play a crucial role in telling the story through the eyes of a man who is, after all, insane.
I chose the excerpt on page 24 that begins in the last major paragraph. It's not necessarily a dream, but it's the memory of when Bromden was at the football game in California. A black girl comes up to Bromden and starts talking to him, his mind is on the combines, the machines that the people seem to be a part of and the fluff in the air that the combine is giving off. The fluff may or may not be real to us, but Bromden sees the mist-like material as clear as day (no pun intended). I felt only Kesey could have written this piece because the way he describes the scene through Bromden is with his familiar use of machines. He talks how this girl was getting close to him and telling him to take her away, then a string seemed to be pulling her back to her position in the machine of the girls with the other flowey skirts. The imagery of the cotton fluff in the air gives us that haze that dreams have, he describes it like a memory but it feels like the dream in the way Kesey presents it. A dream from a world that never existed outside of Bromden's mind, but that doesn't make it any less real. I liked this piece because the first time through it made next to no sense for me, much like dreams do when you first think of them from waking up. The second time through I read slower and focused on each word to really take in what was going on, much like you do when you get past the initial "what is going on" phase of recalling a dream. This section just stuck out to me, and now 200 some pages later, I still remember this section when asked about a dream excerpt.
The passage that stands out to me as unique to Kesey is page 129. It is a short paragraph used as a chapter of itself. The times that these short chapters are used are the times that Bromden seems to be making little sense or when Kesey is trying to make a certain point. At this time, Bromden is sharing with the reader the things he is hearing from around him. He hears “frozen parts” coming in down stairs and he hears talk of a man killing himself.
Bromden can’t believe that this guy could not wait long enough to get out, but instead killed himself. Suicide in a psych ward does not seem like it would be an uncommon happening. What is interesting is the way that he did it. This man sat and castrated himself, bleeding to death.
It seems like an odd way to kill off a character. An inventive death for sure. What causes him do die is bleeding to death. It would not happen quickly and it would not be a painless death.
Look at the fact that white males are dominant in society. The big nurse and everyone else try to transform themselves into the dominant figure to appear to be above the patients in the ward. What is interesting about this case is that rather than power being asserted putting employees above this patient, he has been driven to this.
He is getting rid of exactly what it is that makes him a man. Although he did it himself, it was because of being in the ward that made him. So while everyone around the patients try to make them feel inferior by asserting power. This patient was driven to cut off exactly what it was that put him in this place of societal power.
The passage that stands out to me as unique to Kesey is page 129. It is a short paragraph used as a chapter of itself. The times that these short chapters are used are the times that Bromden seems to be making little sense or when Kesey is trying to make a certain point. At this time, Bromden is sharing with the reader the things he is hearing from around him. He hears “frozen parts” coming in down stairs and he hears talk of a man killing himself.
Bromden can’t believe that this guy could not wait long enough to get out, but instead killed himself. Suicide in a psych ward does not seem like it would be an uncommon happening. What is interesting is the way that he did it. This man sat and castrated himself, bleeding to death.
It seems like an odd way to kill off a character. An inventive death for sure. What causes him do die is bleeding to death. It would not happen quickly and it would not be a painless death.
Look at the fact that white males are dominant in society. The big nurse and everyone else try to transform themselves into the dominant figure to appear to be above the patients in the ward. What is interesting about this case is that rather than power being asserted putting employees above this patient, he has been driven to this.
He is getting rid of exactly what it is that makes him a man. Although he did it himself, it was because of being in the ward that made him. So while everyone around the patients try to make them feel inferior by asserting power. This patient was driven to cut off exactly what it was that put him in this place of societal power.
Martinmaas 2
One part that stood out to me is on page 135, paragraph 5. Chief Bromden becomes lost in the fog and believes that he is going to die during a group meeting. Images flash before him including Colonel Matterson reading off his hand. Chief Bromden is able to interpret what the Colonel is saying before the image drifts away. He realizes that the Colonel isn't crazy like they think because he can understand him. As the Chief loses himself in the fog more, he thinks he is dead and no longer can feel pain. He comes face to face with other patients and reveals details about them before another one comes into view. As he is describing the details laid out in front of him, he hears the black boys whispering about how he had fallen asleep. I found this strange because it doesn't connect with the Chief that everything he is seeing is a dream/hallucination. It also makes it unclear as to whether or not the Chief is dreaming these things while asleep, or seeing these images while awake. I think Kesey uses Chief Bromden's dreams and the fog to make the reader see the scenes in a different way. I think Chief Bromden’s dreams and hallucinations are interesting because they are always brought up because of the fog. Chief Bromden believes that everybody can see the fog, and that the nurses control it. During his dream (and other times), he states that McMurphy is trying to pull people out of the fog, including himself. Chief Bromden doesn’t want to be pulled out of the fog though. I think Kesey’s experiences with drugs might have helped create this scene. The random hallucinations and loss of control Chief Bromden had in the fog could represent moments when Keseys was on drugs. McMurphy trying to pull Chief Bromden out of the fog could represent people trying to stop Kesey from doing drugs, and Chief Bromden’s unwillingness to leave the fog could be Kesey’s fight against becoming sober.
Schroeder Pd. 2
The passage that I thought could only be written by the very unique Ken Kesey was paragraph 2 on page 77. Chief Bromden discusses how Nurse Ratched furtively controls the speed at which time passes within the ward. He states, “She’ll turn that dial to a dead stop and freeze the sun there on the screen so it don’t move a scant hair for weeks, so not a leaf on a tree or a blade of grass in the pasture shimmers.” The patients feel when there is an event they want to last awhile (such as getting sleep at night), that is when Nurse Ratched speeds time up; when they have long afternoons that they wish would pass quickly, Nurse Ratched makes sure these periods of times are anything but ephemeral. Chief Bromden discusses time as it barely ticks by while sitting in the day room; he states, “The only thing you can move is your eyes and there’s nothing to see but petrified Acutes across the room waiting on one another to decide whose play it is. The old Chronic next to me has been dead six days, and he’s rotting to the chair.” It feels like time is passing by so slowly that some of the patients are decaying as they sit uselessly in the ward. Chief continually brings up the fog that he is immersed in so often throughout the novel; in this paragraph he talks about a clear chemical gas that he believes Nurse Ratched irrefutably let through the vents (or so he hallucinates).
Chief Bromden’s hallucinations make this novel difficult to read because I cannot understand exactly what is real and what is not. I think Ken Kesey could have only written this paragraph, along with many others, because of his not so tyronic use of drugs. Due to participating in a project for the US military, he was familiar with the usage of LSD, cocaine, and other psychoactive drugs. Kesey had many bizarre possibly macabre hallucinations; he was able to use his experiences while writing about the patients’ hallucinations.
Swanson 7
The excerpt I decided to choose is the one on page 128 which only has the one paragraph. This paragraph is used as it's own chapter. I think when Kesey devotes just one single paragraph to a chapter, he is trying to make a certain point for us readers. This paragraph is about Bromden saying that it is very hard for him to find his way to bed at night when it is dark. He also talks about how nobody complains about the fog he sees because it is so simple to just slip right back in the fog where it is safe. Bromden says McMurphy just does not understand about all of the patients being safe. McMurphy is trying to pull everyone out of safety and out of the fog so that he can get at them and control them. Kesey is trying to say that even though the fog is bad, nobody complains about the fog and not being able to see because the fog is there for protecting you from not seeing the bad of McMurphy and seeing everything within your view is safe. I believe anything written about the fog cannot be written by anybody else besides Ken Kesey. With all of the mentioned drugs as Mr. Heiberger has stated Kesey did, I believe that Kesey also was having hallucinations and was seeing the fog. With Bromden finding it hard to search for where is bed is in the dark, I think that Kesey had a similar problem-- of course, probably not like Bromden where he could not find his bed-- but maybe he had problems finding others things that he had ongoing problems with.
To Vik Lovell, who told me dragons did not exist, then led me to their lairs.
Found within the dedication at the beginning of the novel, this piece of text is what I thought only Kesey could have written. While it is rather strange, there may be some sort of message behind it that only Kesey knows, and possibly literary specialists. While we may take guesses and make assumptions, it is possible that we will never grasp the true meaning, which makes this even more intriguing. Taking into account his background of drug experimentation, Kesey could be alluding to something that happened between him and Vik, but I would rather take a more literary approach to such a predicament. Kesey could be making a statement about today’s society in some form. If this were true, then who or what are the dragons? When we think of dragons, elongated flying lizards that breathe fire tends to be the popular image. This would make sense, especially for Kesey, with all the the vivid imagery shown throughout the novel. But what is the relevance of these dragons? Kesey’s statement could also be simply telling us to keep an open mind, too. Although Vik told Kesey that dragons were not real, Vik proceeded to show Kesey that they were indeed not a figment of their vivid drug-induced imaginations, which presents to us the fact that we can’t believe everything that we’re told. Of course, though, the dragons in the scenario weren’t real, but rather, a clever symbol of something far deeper. Something the provokes enough thought to write about it in great depth, even though it may only be thirteen words in length. But it’s the truth, even if it didn’t happen.
Onnen 7
The paragraph I chose is on page 126 and is the third paragraph on the page. This paragraph comes right after Chief Bromden explains the picture hanging on the wall that is brought to their facility by Public Relations. The next paragraph is then Chief Bromden entering the photo. He continues to speak of "the path running down through the aspen", and "the crash of the cold, frothy stream coming down out of the rocks." I believe Kesey is the only person who could write this paragraph because I believe this is probably something Kesey himself has experienced. Kesey is known to have experimented with many different drugs throughout his life, and I'm sure he experienced a multitude of hallucinations. This paragraph sounds like it could be a direct connection to one of those hallucinations. At one point Kesey has probably looked at a painting(during a high) and felt as though he became a part of that image or that the image became his world. He became a new person in an entirely new world. Chief Bromden experiences this same sort of sensation but not because of a drug high but because of his schizophrenia. He genuinely feels as though he is there along the stream of water and is experiencing everything the fly-fisher is experiencing.
In my opinion Kesey has based this paragraph off of one of his many hallucination he has experienced over the years. This may in fact be an exact hallucination he had at a time in his life. There is really no main purpose for this part of the story, Kesey could easily have mentioned the picture and moved on with the storyline. Instead he chose to go into great detail of the painting. For this reason I believe this was something he himself has experienced on several different occasions. This was Kesey's way of adding a part of himself to his novel.
Jackson 2
I felt a very well could have chosen any paragraph in the book to be something that only Kesey wrote. The way he writes is very strange like your sometimes just observing what is happening and then later you are in some guy’s head, most likely Chief Bromden, who is likely in the corner all the time just sweeping the floor and overlooking everything that is happening. I did remember one paragraph that did enlighten how the majority of the patients at the ward felt about the Nurse and what they think she is trying to do at the ward. The paragraph is the second one down on page twenty-nine, starting with “What she dreams…”. This paragraph definitely exceeds the three key goals we should look for to expound on being, inventiveness, imagination, and authenticity. The Big Nurse’s dream is basically to have the ward run like a organized city or machine that does exactly what you tell it to do unless it is otherwise modified to do something else. She wants to set up the process to what goes on in the ward and then sit back and overlook everything flow throughout the day like a factory. One could compare the Big Nurse’s dream ward to a modern day business but without the extremes or strictness she stands upon. The Big Nurse is the owner of the business that got the place running and hires the managers and workers to keep the place running. The black boys are the managers as they overlook the operations the owner puts in place and the patients of the ward are the normal employees or workers that are constantly forced to do what the managers or in this case black boys tell them to do to please the Big Nurse, or owner. The rest of the chapter after this paragraph i also found interesting and felt it enhanced the ideas of the chapter I choose to speak about as the rest of the chapter follows along a precise timeline or time schedule that has to be followed out everyday with profound detail. As Chief Bromden narrates it verbatim from the beginning of the day till the end you begin to realize how long some of them have been at the ward and how little there is to do.
I chose paragraph number 5 on page 134. This is the scene in which Bromden is supposedly floating in the fog. He sees a chair float past him. Bromden desperately tries to "swim" over to the chair to grab on, but cannot. I believe that this is a paragraph that only Kesey, or any other drug-using hippie, could have written. It seems to me that Bromden floating on the fog and the things he sees and feels eerily similar to the effects of a psychedelic, or so I'm told. Chief hallucinates seeing a fingerprint on the chair where someone has touched it before. To the naked eye, this would be invisible. For a person with schizophrenia or a person taking a psychedelic drug, this would seem very real. Objects and colors pop more, and seem larger than they actually are. Chief even points out that [the fingerprint] was "looming out for a few seconds, the fading on off again." After Bromden sees this fingerprint, he notices how he has never seen objects float this way and never seen fog this think before. He talks about how even if he wanted to he could not get down on the floor and walk. I think perhaps Kesey is making a reference to a very powerful psychedelic or a larger dose of one that he took in his lifetime that made him feel similar to this. He may have been so high that he felt as if he would never be sober again. Sometimes people on psychedelics have a bad trip, which could come with countless side effects. I believe that Kesey may have had a bad trip at some point in his life that made him feel as if he was going to die. Similarly, Bromden feels as though the fog is going to carry him off someplace for good. Only someone with the life experiences of Kesey could have written such in depth, interesting material.
McIlravy 2
I found the paragraph located on page 129, the only paragraph on the page, very interesting. The drastic change from reading entire chapters to a single paragraph in a chapter was odd, yet provided emphasis. Throughout the story it is obvious that chief Bromden is Schizophrenic. To be able to describe the thoughts and actions of a schizophrenic is a unique characteristic. The way Kesey is able to describe the actions and thoughts in great detail helps to show his experience in such situations. Not having this experience would put a great strain on the way Kesey composed his work. Having the knowledge and understanding of situations like these helps him relate to his writing. Schizophrenia can be compared to the effects of some drugs, from causing imaginary scenes and/or hallucinations. Kesey’s experience with drugs, such as LSD, makes his writing stand out and provides experiences that not many others could write about. He knows the ups and downs of the ways the drug affects your mind, and this can be compared to that of schizophrenia. Kesey’s writing is truly clever and original. It could not come from many other minds having not experienced as much as Kesey.
I believe that the sudden change in chapter lengths is used as emphasis to really get his point across. Kesey wants the readers to know just how insane and disturbing the thoughts of Bromden really can be, and without all the experience he has he wouldn’t be able to share in the interesting way that he did. Though his past involvements may seem rough or bad, they only helped him become a successful writer and provide the readers with images they won’t forget. The abrupt paragraph really strikes as something completely original and different than anything else. Kesey was trying to make his point by shocking the reader with the harsh thoughts of a major character, and he certainly did so.
Jackson 2 (Revised version, accidentally submitted before proofreading and couldn't take the old one down.)
I felt I very well could have chosen any paragraph in the book to be something that “only Kesey wrote”. The way he writes is very strange like you’re sometimes just observing what is happening and then later you are in some guy’s head, most likely Chief Bromden, who is likely in the corner all the time just sweeping the floor and overlooking everything that is happening. I did remember one paragraph that did enlighten how the majority of the patients at the ward felt about the Nurse and what they think she is trying to do. The paragraph is the second one down on page twenty-nine, starting with “What she dreams…”. This paragraph definitely exceeds the three key goals we should look for to expound on being, inventiveness, imagination, and authenticity. The Big Nurse’s dream is basically to have the ward run like a organized city or machine that does exactly what you tell it to do unless it is otherwise modified to do something else. She wants to set up the process to what goes on in the ward and then sit back and overlook everything flow throughout the day like a factory. One could compare the Big Nurse’s dream ward to a modern day business but without the extremes or strictness she stands upon. The Big Nurse is the owner of the business that got the place running and hires the managers and workers to keep the place running. The black boys are the managers as they overlook the operations the owner puts in place and the patients of the ward are the normal employees or workers that are constantly forced to do what the managers or in this case black boys tell them to do to please the Big Nurse, or owner. The rest of the chapter after this paragraph i also found interesting and felt it enhanced the ideas of the chapter I choose to speak about as the rest of the chapter follows along a precise timeline or time schedule that has to be followed out everyday with profound detail. As Chief Bromden narrates it verbatim from the beginning of the day till the end you begin to realize how long some of them have been at the ward and how little there is to do.
Hindbjorgen 1
Ken Kesey is an author like no other. How he writes on page 113, paragraph two, absolutely astounds me. On this page, Chief is describing why Nurse Ratched is always winning, no matter how many battles she loses, because she has the power of combine behind her. My favorite quote from this excerpt is “She’s lost a little battle here today, but it’s a minor battle in a big war that she’s been winning and that she’ll go on winning…She doesn’t lose on her losses, but she wins on ours.” Kesey is pure genius. He managed to sum up our society’s problem of being stuck in a perpetual rut with a seemingly simple explanation. Society plays a game that not one individual can win. Even though society seems to take a loss every once in a while, within a week, it is back on its feet, ruling over us once more— “It’s a minor battle in a big war that she’s [society’s] been winning.” The combine is our society, pulling people into it’s restraint of “normalcy,” as Nurse Ratched represents society’s leaders, as she dictates the small society existing within the hospital. Society isn’t defeated like individuals are prone to be when society loses—individuals do not achieve any personal gain from society’s loss. Yet, when individuals loose, society accepts their triumph and is significantly strengthened. Kesey is not individual for his view points in the early 1960’s, as many were frustrated with the static and crude society of the 1950’s. What makes Kesey unique is his analysis of why society is this way and his unremitting passion for ending society’s strict grip. By expressing his views through the lowest, yet most observant, minority he could—a Native American stricken with schizophrenia, cooped up in a mental hospital—Kesey was able to explain the interminable pattern of how our society works. His new level of inventiveness and perception has changed readers perspective on how society really runs.
Lusk 5
The excerpt that stood out to me that I think only Ken Kesey could have written is on page 90 starting with the first paragraph and carrying on through to the rest of the page. The first paragraph is him describing a hallucination. He says that “crazy, horrible things too goofy and outlandish to cry about and too much true to laugh about,” are happening around him. It almost seems like he has become so numb in this hallucination that he can’t react to what is going on around him, or is unable to interpret what is happening. The readers learn just how crazy Chief Bromden actually is. He believes the fog is ubiquitous and is there to protect him and that if he stays behind it no one can see him or reach him. The sentence that comes right after the first paragraph stuck out to me the most on this page. I believe that Kesey left it all by itself with no other surrounding sentences to emphasis it and to make sure his readers look at it closely without just passing over it. “But if they don’t exist, how can a man see them?” It catches the audience attention since it is by itself buy also because it is a question. For me, at least, I caught myself stopping after I read that and thinking about where he took this sentence.
Ken Kesey is a very unwonted writer because of his past. He took part in a project that studied the effects of psychoactive drugs, such as LSD, cocaine, DMT, and many others. His understanding of what it is like to be on such strong and inordinate drugs he is able to delineate and describe exactly what he wants his reader to know. He has taken life experiences from when he was a human guinea pig and put them into this book to display what it was like for him.
Arens 2
The paragraph I choose is on page 88, the second paragraph. This paragraph explains the hallucination of when Blastic had died. Bromden pictures pretty much a slaughter house that has Blastic on the hook instead of an animal. Kesey is the only person who could have written this because he has done drugs and may have experienced something like this in the past. Also Kesey worked in an institution like this one and may have heard stories from the patients similar to this one. I believe that if you hear something enough you may start to believe it even if it isn't real. If this theory is correct then Kesey was really screwed because of the drugs he was taking. He already had these images in his head and the LSD took over and he actually visualized it. The details are so vivid in this paragraph that I don't think anyone but Kesey could have written it. He knows what these types of wards are like and put them to use in this paragraph. Bromden sees the problems with the ward and so did Kesey. I believe that Kesey is Bromden. Kesey also has an already big imagination from the drugs so when he put this to use within his writing he showed it well. I know I would have never thought of hanging someone from a hook after they died, it is inhumane to even think that. Kesey is so good at making people visualize his thoughts that I feel like I am going with Bromden through his "trip". Even though a lot of Kesey's thoughts and ideas came from doing drugs, they are pretty interesting and cool. I don't think any other author would ever think of writing a book about things that may happen while on drugs or as a schizophrenic person. Drugs and experience in a ward make for a good story.
Peltier 1
Reading has always been an enjoyable hobby for me, yet reading One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey I found myself having difficulties starting due to the choppy writing technique and the constant switch between reality and fantasy. Kesey has executed a new style of writing I had not been exposed to before reading this book. Imagery Kesey obtains from the extravagant hallucinations cannot be found in any other authors work, this imagery can be considered Kesey trademark. Kesey is able to portray this novel through the character, Chief Bromden, who is mentally disabled according to society yet has insight on everything in the hospital due the concealment of his ability to hear and talk. Bromden extraordinary ability to perceive the hospital as a conformity machine, rather than rehabilitating place allows him to put together pieces of the mechanics Nurse Ratched wants to keep hidden from the patients. Among the chores Bromden is assigned is cleaning the staff room during meetings gives him extra knowledge on Ratched’s obsession on controlling the patients. On page 151 in the second paragraph, Kesey exemplifies the staff meeting. “Cleaning the staff room is always bad. The things I’ve had to clean up in these meetings nobody’d believe, horrible things, poisons manufactured right out of the skin pores and acids in the air strong enough to melt a man. I’ve seen it” (151). Kesey’s writing style is unique to his books without giving extraordinary in depth detail Kesey portrays the scene in Bromden’s head. The inventiveness which was poured in to this book is extensive just this paragraph draws connections to a mental hospital during the period the novel was written (1962) in order to call to question and force justification on why conformity was more important than safety. These meetings in which Chief Bromden stealthily sat in on were about the mental patients, the doctors would try to figure out the ways to melt off the man they were before in order to mold the new from the clays left behind. Calling to question the actions of the doctors, Kesey was also able to show a man unwilling to be melted since he posses the knowledge of truth. It was time to change. Kesey main purpose of this novel was not only to bring attention to the mental hospitals but also to call to question the sanity of the entire country on why we are so happy to force people to confirm to the American ideals but we pride ourselves on the ideal of freedom. Reading this book may not have started easily but Kesey has a way of entrapping you in the hospital with Bromden and Ratched giving you a front row seat to the inner workings of the hospital.
Spurlin 5
Aware of the author’s life experiences I recognized an excerpt carrying from page 135 and 136 that, no doubt, was composed by the one and only Ken Kesey. Kesey was an interesting man, he chose to participate in the army’s research on mind-altering drugs as well as writing while high on acid. The chosen sample paragraph may have been written during or about a high. Also noteworthy was his work experience in a psych ward which lead to his spectacular novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. He vividly depicts an experience in Bromden’s point of view, “I strain to see him drifting away. I strain so hard my eyes ache and I have to close them, and when I open them again the colonel is gone. I’m floating by myself again, more lost than ever.” It goes on to bring back memories to Bromden. The memories could hurt him like other daunting ones but he reassures himself this is there is no use in holding on to the memories. The hallucination lifts of the burden and baggage he has long clenched onto. This portion arguably relates to a high Kesey has experienced; it is a far-fetched, fictional fantasy. Those who have not experimented with drugs would be highly unlikely to create a fragment as intricately described as this.
Ironically, a highly disapproved lifestyle of drug use has been elicited and in fact praised for expertise in literature. The hallucinations seen by ward patients are augmented by Kesey’s authentic knowledge of illusory dreams. Falling down into the void, drifting away to nowhere, and floating in the air all specialize the book’s mimesis values. Readers fall into the book and feel the character’s emotions when stories are told in real-life settings. It is no wonder Kesey succeeds in raising moral debate and questions of the mentally ill treatment. Intentional intricate plot features formulated a story with so much symbolism and recurring themes it is evident enough Kesey had outstanding imagination.
I decided to write my blog task on the second full paragraph on page 131. I chose this paragraph because it vaguely reminded me of Frankenstein with the "pulsing light, and bright scrape of arcing electricity." The overall description of the Shock Shop, as Kesey so elegantly calls it, adds a macabre feel to the scene. I feel that one room is meant to be a microchism of the entire hospital: harmful instead of helpful. Also, the table "with shadows of a thousand murdered men printed on it" is deliberately shaped like a cross. This, I believe, is symbolic of how the men being "treated" do not actually need help and are "innocent" of being insane, which ties into Christ and his crucifixion. While I find this book rather difficult to understand sometimes, as Kesey's level of thinking is on an entirely different level than my own, his use of imagery and irony in this paragraph made his meaning snap out at me. The EST room is also described realistically, taken through the lens of Chief Bromden's schizophrenia, and Kesey's experience in similar institutions plays a large part in making the place believable.
A portion of this story that truly could not have been written by anyone other than Kesey is the last paragraph on page 150. Following a solid victory by McMurphy, Bromden describes how the ward is now without the fog. He states, “…the white tubes in the ceiling circulate frozen light like rods of glowing light, like frosted refrigerator coils rigged up to glow white.” He goes on to mention a green light in the staff room, and a green seepage. To me, this passage only could have been written by Kesey. Due to his well-known involvement with hippies and drugs, there is no doubt that he has seen and imagined things that the rest of us cannot relate to. A very popular drug at this time was LSD, a drug that would cause extremely wild hallucinations. His experimenting with new and powerful drugs, in combination with his time working in a mental health facility, gives the reader a narrative experience unlike any other. His incredible imagination makes this passage and many others in the novel, a treat to read. Most, if not all, of these crazy hallucinations Kesey has dreamed up, have some sort of symbolism that is relevant to the book. He uses these episodes to give further insight to what is happening – things a “sane” mind could not see. His use of an insane narrator is so genius; this novel is truly incomparable. It is quite evident that Kesey’s life experiences on drugs, in the army, and in a mental institution have heavily influenced his book. Thank goodness he did not get taken over by the Combine, or we would not have great literature like this to study.
Jackson 7
On page 16 if you look down to the second paragraph, Kesey describes the patient Ellis. Ellis was apparently a man who came in with few problems and therefore labeled an Acute. However, they put him in Electroshock Therapy, which he refers to as "brain murdering" and calls the place they take him the "Shock Shop". Only Kesey could properly describe this first part of the paragraph so accurately. Most of us don't realize how dangerous and hard on you the Electroshock Therapy really is. We only know it as something schizophrenic people have to do because it helps them to be more "normal". However, we don't realize it turns them into a nonsensical robot. It completely makes you unable to think or do anything for yourself, but that's what the ward wants, isn't it?
The second part of the paragraph I would like to focus on is the delusions that Chief Bromden has. First, he believes that Ellis is actually nailed to the wall. He has probably heard about Jesus being nailed to the cross. In which case, he views Ellis's hands as actually being nailed to the wall. He thinks that the staff nails him there every day and simply pulls out the nails at night in order to let the man go to sleep. unfortunately, it is simply the ward's sick way of getting the man to stay in one place. They trick Ellis into thinking he is actually nailed to the wall so he has to stand in one place all day and cannot move or do anything. Since he has had the therapy, he can't logically do anything for himself so him and Chief Bromden are under the impression that he is actually nailed to that wall until they are gracious enough to pull out the nails and let the man go to bed. He also believes that Ellis is peeing himself and this is burning a hole through the floor, like acid. Only Kesey can properly right about this because he too had delusions. We, as a perfectly sane reader, cannot fully understand how someone who is peeing on the floor could be imagined to have burned a hole through it and is, therefore, falling through the floor. It makes no sense in our mind. We can't begin to put ourselves in other people's brains who do have mental disorders when we do not.
Ask pd. 5
On page 88 I believe we have a spectacular description of the inner workings of the mind of a schizophrenic. For those who don't have the books pages memorized, allow me to shed some light on the subject. After McMurphy gives Chief his pill, Chief rejects it. Being a antipsychotic, (Anti-Hallucination pill) Chief spirals into a world of fright, that could only be written by a person who has had these similar sights and sounds themselves. Ken Kesey's heavy use of drugs deteriorated his body at a rapid pace, but also gave him insight into this kind of creativity, symbolism, and ability to give us such a vivid picture. I honestly believe that an author who hasn't taken drugs couldn't nearly as vividly show us what Chief saw. Most illegal drugs are bad, don't get me wrong, but it seems in the department of creativity, Ken Kesey surely benefited. The way he explains these torturous contraptions is astounding.
Smith 2
The paragraph I chose to write about is on page 145(the only paragraph). In this paragraph Chief is describing the Big Nurse losing her control. He said that if anyone looked in they would think they are all crazy. As the book has unfolded we have read the power struggle between the Nurse, and McMurphy. This is the paragraph that we really see her sanity unravel. And even Chief can see this; even though he is the supposed insane person. This is also the turning point for the patients. They are starting to see the control they could have over the nurse with McMurphy’s help. The men are all lined up in front of the TV that is blank. The nurse, in a last ditch effort, turned off the TV so that the men could not watch baseball. Her hopes of subduing the men with this little action failed. Even with the television off McMurphy is able to contrive the men’s actions to his will. They all sit around the blank TV and listen to McMurphy’s wondrous stories and laughter. His control over the men is at an all-time high at this point in the book. The men all look up to him for his support and for instructions on what they should do. They begin to question the Nurse’s decision which is the opposite of what she wants to happen. Without her control over the men she has nothing, and she knows this. McMurphy is also beginning to look like a safe zone for the other men in the ward. They know that the Head Nurse doesn’t have any control over him so what they do that he is involved with will not have consequences. They have watched him get away with things that they could never have dreamed of getting away with while spending time at in the ward.
Mutschelknaus 1
The paragraph I chose was the second full paragraph on page 136. I found it very interesting and felt it displayed inventiveness only Kesey could provide.
Fog is usually seen as being a light film of water floating through the air close to the ground. It is almost like a cloud that has floated down just above the ground. However, Kesey has managed to change this light, airy element into a heavy, petulant nuisance. On the other hand, Chief is able to hide back in the fog and be in a world of his own. This allows him to escape the therapy session until McMurphy approaches him through the fog and asks him to vote. The fact that Kesey was able to use an element people associate as being light and airy and make it into a heavy juggernaut is fascinating.
Kesey, as we all know, was an interesting man. He willingly used drugs for the government to see what they would do to a human being. This may have been a good thing for him however. He has experienced many things everybody else in the world has not, so he is then able to use those experiences to create gripping scenes in the stories he writes. The fog scene is one of those scenes I believe he created under the influence of drugs. Fog is not an easy element to use in a story let alone make it a key symbol in a major scene in the story. You have to be bright and creative, or maybe simply insane, to invent a scene like this with a symbol as boring as fog. Kesey’s past experiences throughout his years have enabled him to be in his own class among great authors today.
“The Fog”
The page and paragraph I though only Ken Kesey could write was page 133 and paragraph 3. Chief is explaining how it feels to be engulfed by the fog. I feel that Kesey is the only one who could have written this. He gets very into detail about how there is so much water in the air that he feels like he is drowning. He is undeniably the only one who could write like this because he is the only one who knows what it feels like. Maybe he has even seen this happen to someone. I feel that he captures this feeling easily. It was very realistic and I could visualize this happening as I read it; I feel that this is what makes a great author. He says that he feels the water so thick that he feels like he is floating around in it. Other than just using very precise, descriptive words he also breaks down the fourth wall in this book. What I mean is that he brings the reader into the book. It sounds like it could be very realistic if you did not know what the book was about. I can imagine all the characters floating around and possible drowning. I also enjoy the foreshadowing in this part. It was very cleverly woven into the story. I also think that he does an incredible job at making the fog symbolic. It shows up repeatedly throughout the book, but so far I think that it was written the best here. It shows how “unstable” or insane the chief is. He talks about how he cannot see a thing. This is also something that only Kesey could have written because he really captures the feelings. You are not simply just reading the words but you are feeling the story as it is happening. This also helps support my “breaking the fourth wall” theory.
Ken Kesey is able to create interesting scenes influenced by his experiences. Chief Bromden steps into a painting and is refreshed with the cool, natural peacefulness it brings him. He welcomes the change and relishes in the unusual coolness. However, the visiting doctor outside the painting seems unhappily cold when supposedly exposed to the same, symbolic breeze. The second paragraph on page 127 depicts the visiting doctor as a small, shivering man, and Chief Bromden remarks, “Maybe he feels the cold snow wind off the peaks too” (127). A person is more likely to react negatively to a gust of cold air than a consistently chilly atmosphere he has been exposed to; we welcome cool days amid the hot stretch of summer, but are unpleasantly shocked when running water is too cold. Ken Kesey is implementing his perspective on society by showing us, through Chief Bromden stepping into the painting, that there are changes to be made for the better. They may seem unsettling at first glance (the visiting doctor is bothered by the idea--the cool gust of change), but once a population is immersed in the simplicity, there is peace. He makes indirect hints and blunt statements about his opinions, saying what seems to be a free world is really mechanized, strict, and muggy. Modern society is rigid. I think the chapter involving the painting is unique to Ken Kesey because it is rooted with his perspectives on society. The mechanized hospital doesn’t seem so terrible to visitors, but Chief Bromden can imagine a different life where he is not relegated to clockwork systems.
Not only is Ken Kesey’s writing unique because of his life, but also because of his creativity and skill. On page 42, Nurse Ratched’s uniform is compared to “a frozen canvas being folded.” I cannot paraphrase such a description while maintaining its intriguing beauty. The sentence contains imagination and it perfectly captures the sound and sight of her clothing. Kesey consistently uses artistic, unique metaphors and similes to amplify descriptions. He places unequaled descriptions within symbolic chapters, which string together to create a thought-provoking novel.
Kramer 2
The excerpt I chose was the second paragraph located on page 88. There is no doubt that Kesey is the only author—the only human—capable of writing such words. In this paragraph Bromden has a vivid hallucination of a slaughterhouse where Blastic is portrayed as an animal making his way around on meat hooks. Bromden has these hallucinations after rejecting his red antipsychotic pill. Kesey, being an avid drug user and likely abuser, would have experience with this. It’s easy to write about what you think you know, but Kesey took it to another level having actually understood such hallucinations. Kesey’s words have the ability to appall even the reader, imagine actually living through it! Kesey worked in an institution and may have heard of similar stories to similar to Bromden’s hallucinations. Both Bromden and Kesey are able to see how corrupt a ward (or even the real world) can become. I also found it interesting how Kesey repeated brings up industry and farming. This also proves how only Kesey, being a farmer himself, could write paragraphs such as the one on page 88. Kesey would be accustomed the to lack of emotions involved in slaughtering animals and the routine of the industry—making things seem inhumane and somewhat sociopathic. I enjoy how Kesey incorporates both aspects into his writing; no other writer could give so much detail to a situation. He puts emotion into an emotionless setting. I believe that Kesey is trying to show the reader that what may appear to obviously clear to some people can be completely controversial to others. Who is to set the standard of what is real and what is merely a figment of our own mind? What I see on the outside as black and white may appear in a multitude of colors to another person. Society loves to judge and stereotype someone just because they have a different mindset. We all label a person as insane or unfit to be “normal” and separate them. Do we have their interest in mind or our own? Kesey makes a reader look at every situation from a different view. We must decide is what a character is thinking is real or imagined; sane or insane; black and white or filled with color. I believe that only Kesey could take an average life style (farming, wrestling, etc.) and blend that with another world (drugs, hippy lifestyle, etc.)
Beldin 1
The excerpt I chose was the on page 161 paragraph 4. Although the article isn’t the most conventional one to choose when thinking about one that only Ken Kesey could write, I chose it because I felt it was the most relatable. In this paragraph Chief is describing features he has and comparing them to those of his father and the Indians he has seen on TV. Chief keeps saying he doesn’t understand how he can be him. Then he ponders how McMurphy can be himself. Chief is showing a struggle that many un-institutionalized people would go through. I found it symbolic when Chief talked about the eyes. He was comparing his eyes to his fathers and also the ones of the Indians he sees on TV. He talks about the eyes on the Indians being tough and mean. I find this symbolic because Chief has eyes that see all, but his eyes also deceive him. His eyes see illusory visions, such as Ratched turning into large monster that attacked the black boys. Many Indians depend on their eyes to guide them to food, water sources, and often safety; Chief is trying to find the similarities between him and other Indians but cannot because he doesn’t have the eyes to guide him to safety. Chief is constantly throughout the novel trying to discover who he is. He looks in the mirror and cannot see himself, he doesn’t know who he is and is trying to discover, but he never can. I believe Chiefs brain compensates for this by creating the illusion of the fog. He wants to find a way to justify why he cannot see or think clearly. This short segment on page 161 truly shows Kesey’s ability to encourage deeper thinking within his novels. This article was squeezed in while Chief was pondering McMurphy. I believe if Kesey put this article anywhere else in the novel it wouldn’t hold as much significance as it does now.
Some of my favorite paragraphs of many that only Ken Kesey could have written was paragraphs 3, 4, and 5 on page 133. These paragraphs talk about the fog that Chief sees. It describes how thick it rolls in, and how the words come at him like they are coming through water because the fog is so thick. He talks about how the floating in the “water” almost makes him feel sick to his stomach. I think these paragraphs were incredibly unique and interesting. It helps us see how Chief sees the world, and helps us understand a little bit about why he is the way he is. They are not something that you read in every book.
I thought this was incredibly inventive and imaginative. It is hard to see inside of the head of a hallucinating man, but Kesey makes it easy by using such descriptive and specific wording. I love all of the passages that describe Chiefs hallucinations because I think they really help us get into the mind of the narrator. Without these we would never truly be able to read the book as Kesey intended. Sometimes these passages are confusing or hard to understand. It seems unclear what the dreams mean or what really happened. Although this may be frustrating to some, I think that is probably what hallucinating is really like. You never see things clearly or truly understand what is happening, and I think a little confusion helps us understand what it is like to have this happening inside your head. Perhaps Kesey knows how to illustrate this so well because he has dealt with hallucinations, brought on by drugs, himself. This would certainly explain how he manages to provide a lengthy book full of authentic and inventive new ideas.
Rykhus 1
The chunk that I am saying could only be written by Kesey is the dedication where he dedicated the novel to his colleagues at Stanford University, Vik Lovell. Vik Lovell was responsible for the creation of a classic book that we have come to appreciate and Kesey recognizes this, that is why the book, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest is dedicated to him. The quote is as follows:
“To Vik Lovell
who told me dragons did not exist,
then led me to their lairs”
In real life this can be distilled into a couple different meanings. First is the most obvious that Lovell is the one who taught Kesey to be an imaginative writer. A writer who has an open mind where they can be told that dragons do not exist but be led to their lairs by the very same man who denied their existence to him before. To be open enough to change their view based on what is the current realities and what is true for them; a true relativist. However in doing more research I found this to probably not be the reason that Kesey chose to dedicate his book to Lowell in this way.
It turns out Lovell was the Inspiration for this book because he is the one who encouraged Kesey to go visit a mental hospital to try the psychedelic drugs they were paying people to try. It is here where Kesey observed the patients of the ward and took a night job to start writing a book. I am led to believe that Vik Lovell did not believe in mentally ill people, that is the meaning of the, ”who told me Dragons did not exist” and then inadvertently or quite possibly quite purposefully led Kesey to the veteran’s hospital to prove his point. This is when he took Kesey strait to the dragon’s lair, or the cuckoo’s nest. This section without a doubt was written by Kesey
Even though I’m sure the question is asking how Kesey’s experiences have affected him I’m not choosing a passage based on Kesey’s previous use of LSD and other drugs. Because plenty of people, including authors, have experimented with hallucinogenic drugs and could write about equally trippy scenes like the Blastic Slaughterhouse and the Combine. The paragraph I chose is the first one on page 116. Kesey is describing the fog further, mentioning a buoy and it’s ability to disable the other men but leave Bromden unaffected. Kesey could be reminiscing on a bad acid trip or, he could deliberately be contributing to the plot. In the passage Bromden is explaining how the fog affects the others’ memories but not his own. To me Kesey is the only one who can write this passage or any passage pertaining to the fog because he is the only one who knows the specific nature of the fog in relation to Bromden. I chose this paragraph because I don’t understand what the fog is incorporated for in any passage of the book. While reading it bugs me not knowing if the fog is good or bad, enemy or ally. This strange figment of Bromden’s imagination is used in dramatic scenes and his softer hallucinations. He uses it to protect himself but also to single out the other men in the ward. To me this creates the most confusing symbol in the book. So in my opinion, Kesey is the only person able to write about the fog because he is the only one that knows one hundred percent what its purpose is in relation to the book.
I have chosen page 128 and there is only one paragraph on that page.
'It's getting hard to locate my bed at night, have to crawl around on my hands and knees feeling underneath the springs till I find my gobs of gum stuck there. Nobody complains about the fog. I know why, now: as bad as it is, you can slip back in it and feel safe. That's what McMurphy can't understand, us wanting to be safe. He keeps trying to drag us out of the fog, out in the open where we'd be easy to get at.'
I chose this paragraph because it seems to be a paragraph that a lot of people can relate too. Although the 'fog' is not real to others, but it haunts Chief, like how many things haunt real people.
I do not like to look into things an author write because I believe a lot of times a teacher over thinks books and it is annoying, but the fog to me is not just a mist, it's something more.
Chief uses the fog as a way of self protection. The only time he gets into deep into the fog when something unusual happens. I think Kesey uses the fog to connect with his audience because at some point or another the reader has been 'in a fog' and knows how Chief is feeling because most character can not connect with an Irishman who likes to drink or gamble, or a man who is nailed to the wall. But someone who is a fly on a wall, a loner, and can not really grasp their own life, they probably can.
I think the fog is another way Kesey made us sympathize with Chief. He is this huge man that could take anyone easily, but he is trapped in his own mind. Most of the main character in this book have their minds so we can not really feel sorry for them.
This is just an ingenious way to get us to connect with a character. It is also an ingenious idea on how to confuse the reader. Making them figure out what's going on in the real world and what is going on in Chief's mind.
Eigenberg 1
A paragraph that only Ken Kesey could write with his exceptional creativeness and ingenuity is on page 129, paragraph 1. In this paragraph Chief Bromden describes a room filled with a shipment of hearts, kidneys, and other organs. Later on he over hears a worker talking about how Old Rawler has killed himself by cutting his own balls while in the bathroom. Kesey's work in a psychiatric hospital most definitely proved the authenticity of this paragraph, since only someone who has experienced it first had could go into such detail about the suicide of a patient. Since many other authors don’t have the background that Kesey has this makes it a one of a kind paragraph.
Kesey adds more authenticity to this paragraph by adding in his own two cents at the end of the paragraph, when Chief ponders what makes people so impatient, and that all he had to do was wait. Here, Kesey may be saying that as a culture Americans are always going and do not think they have time to stop, and in doing so may be ruining their lives. Also, he may be saying that if Old Rawler had waited a little bit longer that he may have been moved to a better place or passed away in a less painful and more respectable manner.
I view Kesey as a very original and imaginative writer in that he has very vivid descriptions and that he likes to experiment with that structure of his novel. One experiment that only Kesey could do is having a whole page dedicated to one small, yet important paragraph. He has many examples of authentic imagination and in this paragraph that entails the manner in which Rawler died and the storeroom of organs in the lower level, that Chief Bromden describes to us. This paragraph perfectly shows Kesey’s authentic and imaginative abilities that almost no other author would attempt to use.
Williams pd. 2
For my paragraph I wanted to show how clever and witty Kesey is throughout his novel. Therefore, I chose the paragraph that starts of page 126 and extends to page 127. While this paragraph may be confusing, jumping from Chief Brodmen’s schizophrenic perspective to that of a Public Relations employee, it also shows the irony throughout the whole book. Kesey left a hint at the theme here for the readers to decode. The Public Relations man says “’A man that would want to run away from a place as nice as this, why there’d be something wrong with him.’” This is showing a relationship not only to the men being held inside the building, but the situations going on outside. These men symbolize different people in the outside world, people that don’t belong in a mental institution but, have different traits than the “regular” American. These men represent homosexuals, atheists, and other groups that were not accepted during that time period. When the Public Relations man says “a place as nice as this”, Kesey is referring to the American dream and a capitalist economy and the only people that would disrupt this beautiful place would be the ones that are different and need to be put in the mental institution to keep them out of society. This excerpt expresses Kesey’s opinion on the American Dream and that most people at the time had to fit into a box, one that had certain criteria. The people that didn’t fit the mold of that box were labeled as burdens and were not accepted into society. Kesey didn’t fit the mold. He had different ideas on life and spiritual journeys that people were supposed to take in their lifetime. This excerpt is showing one of Kesey’s past problems that he faced while living in a society that casted out people who thought differently.
Lien M 5
I would like to go all the way back to page 11 the last paragraph that goes into the next page accompanied with paragraph 3 on page 12 and paragraph 5 on page 13. These paragraphs are all describing McMurphy. I'm extremely fascinated in the amount of detail Kesey put in the story to make him sound like the Devil. His red hair that curls our from under his hat--perhaps like horns--with a devilish grin. He also admits to being a gambler. Excessive gambling is considered a sin giving us more reason to believe that he very well could be the Devil. However, Kesey brings another dynamic into play. Kesey writes that he was a farm hand. At that time farming was considered a very holy and righteous job, so why would McMurphy have a job like this? My thinking is that Kesey wanted to portray that the Devil can be deceiving and we need watch our backs at all time to protect ourselves from being hurt or overcome by the Devil. I feel Kesey is the only man who could have created such an intricate character.
I found it extremely difficult to find an excerpt specific to Kesey’s writing, but I narrowed it down to the second paragraph on page 88. This focuses on Chief Bromden’s daydreams and illusions that he sees from day to day. I think that Bromden’s “dreams” are not actually dreams, but instead he narrates with them to act as a symbol for the craziness in the world. I pick up a vibe that Chief Bromden is not nearly as crazy as he thinks he is or as much as the readers are suppose to think he is. It seems to me that instead of McMurphy “pretending” to be crazy, that actually the chief is pretending. I think he acts deaf and dumb because he doesn’t want anything to do with the actual craziness in the ward and goes off alone and hides from the others in fear of the crazies.
I think one of Kesey’s points is that some people abuse the system. Those who we consider “insane” may in fact be much more detailed thinkers than ourselves. Not all abuse the system though, and many think on a lower or more insane level. But what is insane? One quote from class was that everybody is crazy, and in reality, normal is crazy. I am a strong believer in this theory and use it often. As soon as somebody is comfortable around you, they will blossom like a flower and their real mind will come alive. However, to those we do not know very well, we seem to keep in our true personalities, and instead only show the rest of the world what society considers “the norm.” The Chief may too be crazy, but he may be crazy in a good way. Before we consider somebody to be crazy we must really get to know them inside and out. They may have much more in common with you than you would expect. I think this is the underlying lesson Kesey wants to teach us with this story.
It is Chief Bromden’s hallucinations, whether it be from his schizophrenia or the drugs he is given from the ward, that stand out as Kesey’s most colorful, artistic, and descriptive paragraphs. Because Kesey has chosen this character as his narrator, he has allowed himself to write practically any obscure thought that comes to mind concerning the events of the book whether they make any sense or not. Seeing as how Kesey has also experimented with hallucinatory drugs in his lifetime it seems fit that he would be one of the few scholars able to write like this. The couple of paragraphs that stood out to me for their grotesque descriptiveness are on the bottom of page 165 and the rest of 166 describing a young nurse’s birthmark. Instead of being a hallucination, this segment acts as an explanatory assumption coming from a schizophrenic man on how a birthmark works. It seems normal until the point when she begins scrubbing at the stain with a wire brush meant to remove paint and is ultimately successful; the only problem being that she has taken off a bit of skin from what I interpreted. How the birthmark reforms onto her face is what sends chills down my spine. The young nurse supposedly spits up whatever she used to take the birthmark off in the first place, and blames the patients in the ward for her mark. Bromden defines it this way as an explanation as to why the young nurse works nights in the ward so she can get after any patients that are supposed to be sleeping. It is a true and rare talent to be able to take anything that would not normally fit into a cohesive description and put it into writing that can be understood by almost any reader in a variety of ways.
“And later, hiding in the latrine from the black boys, I’d take a look at my own self in the mirror and wonder how it was possible that anybody could manage such an enormous thing as being what he was. There’d be my face in the mirror, dark and hard with big, high cheekbones like the cheek underneath them had been hacked out with a hatchet, eyes all black and hard and mean-looking, just like Papa’s eyes, or the eyes of all those tough, mean-looking Indians you see on TV, and I’d think, That ain’t me, that ain’t my face. It wasn't even me when I was trying to be that face. I wasn’t even really me then; I was just being the way I looked, the way people wanted. It don’t seem like I ever been me. How can McMurphy be what he is?”
This excerpt, starting on page 161 and ending on page 162, simply could not have been crafted by any other than Ken Kesey. The paragraph struck me in particular because it made me pull away from the story and wonder what it really means to “be yourself”. To some extent, we are as we are perceived by our peers. I believe that each of us compartmentalizes certain aspects of our lives, allowing others to only see a superficial layer of our character. However, if what makes us “ourselves” is buried deep inside and only a fraction of our personalities is shown outwardly, then to what extent are we what we “are”? I think this is what Chief Bromden is trying to express through his almost out-of-body-like experience. Chief looks in the mirror and sees himself as those around him might view him. Silent and seemingly deaf, Chief realizes that he portrays only his physical appearance which is that of the stereotypical, callous and aloof Indian (Native American). His face is not his own, his eyes are black and harsh, and standing in his place, he sees his father. Chief Bromden has become “Chief Broom”; he has become what others expect him to be.
I theorize that at this point of the novel, we catch a glimpse of Ken Kesey’s actual beliefs and experiences. Although Kesey was undeniably a brilliant mind, there are certain emotions and events a writer cannot merely fabricate. This section is so simply stated and so elegantly devised that it must have been a revelation that the writer encountered for himself. I believe that at one point, Kesey stood in front of a mirror noting the same fallacy in his own appearance. Whether or not he had an “R.P. McMurphy” to awaken these ideas or if the section was a release of built up frustrations with society, Kesey definitely had a more profound intent behind his words.
Kruse 1
Kesey certainly produces many great images throughout this intense novel, but there are some that jump off the page with bolder letters than the rest. I would like to recall paragraph three on page 32 as one that no one but Kesey could have written. I have a few reasons for believing that no one but he could have come up with this paragraph, and I will start with the mechanics. As a farmer, Kesey would be very familiar with machinery. He may identify well with both McMurphy and Bromden, but often characters are just pieces of the author. Chief knows a lot about machinery, and it is told from his point of view. This is one reason for belief that only our original author could come up with such a thing, as the common worker does not know much about mechanisms.Since Ken is a farmer, the machine being likened to an animal that spits out food with a barn-yard noise is quite comical, and it makes a lot of sense when we know our author’s background. I also think that Kesey could only have written this because of how he mentions time with disgust. He is a free spirit, and concepts of time do not seem to apply as strictly to people who get high on LSD and go farm land. It is a different world for them. I also thoroughly enjoyed, and snickered, when I read the sentence about how a half of a canned peach was laid on a piece of lettuce. This is something done by restaurants that want to appear fancier, with no real purpose but to be pleasing to the eye. It shows that the people working there have at least a little bit of concern for the patients in the ward. It is something that is mockingly funny to me, and it is consistent with Kesey’s great sense of humor.
Hall 5
On page 129 of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Kesey writes about the man up on Disturbed that killed himself. In this paragraph, Ken marvelously conjoins this novel and his own personal experiences to create insane—literally and figuratively—situations. The section that stood out to me was in the first sentence and states, “…all the guy had to do was wait”. Reaching deeper within this passage, Kesey conveys a message that these behaviors will pass if you patiently wait. He can relate to such situations when waiting for the LSD (Lysergic Acid Diethylamide) in his system to wear off. This drug causes psychological effects including an altered thinking process and even delusions. Having gone through terrible trips, he knows that one could go to great extremes such as killing himself because of unpleasant hallucinations. Kesey being one of the few authors with past drug experiences, effortlessly writes about every situation going down in the ward. I think it’s cool because it reveals extraordinary lives most authors wouldn’t be able to portray correctly.
Not only does Kesey have a unique story telling process but also an exceptional way of grabbing attention. If you flip to page 129 you will notice only one paragraph lies on this page. I believe he uses this to grasp our awareness and make us solely focus on the paragraph as a whole. He can expose many details in tiny scripts like this because he has captured our full attention. In this specific example Kesey wants to display how insane and disturbing the ward can be. One would never imagine killing themselves through such bestial ways, unless disturbed in the mind. I enjoyed reading Kesey’s outrageous book. It shows the bizarre views I have never experienced before.
Antrim
5
The excerpt I chose was on page 86 paragraph 3. In this paragraph, Bromden is struggling with his sheets being too tight and with his hallucinations, he takes his tight sheets to a whole new level. Sinking into the floor while scratching at his sheets, Bromden is scared he will suffocate to death. Upon getting the sheets off of him, the floor is back up in a jolt and hes in a room full of machinery.
I feel like only Kesey could have written this. It baffles me how one can be so creative in writing. Other writers may be creative, but only Kesey could have created this paragraph the way he did. Not everyone could have imagined a wall sliding up revealing a huge room full of endless machinery (which could not fit in a wall), men running on catwalks, and faces thrown from furnaces. Kesey is extremely descriptive in this paragraph and many paragraphs. The most descriptive paragraphs of Kesey's are the most disturbing things I have read in my life. Why would just one pill that was not taken make Bromden dream of a living hell in the wall? It is interesting to me how a tall Indian with schizophrenia is scared of machinery and being choked. Only a man who has seen things that were not so pleasant could have thought up all of this. That is why only Kesey could have written this paragraph. Kesey saw some things in life that were not okay. With the things that he saw creates a wider imagination for more disturbing things to come up with. Again I will restate that only Kesey could have written this paragraph due to his past and what he has seen and observed in the world.
Nitz 7
I would really have liked to meet Ken Kesey.
"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" is beautifully woven. It seems like a magnificent quilt, with so many different things compiled together, yet with a clear... feel to it. I can't quite identify it, but the novel has a feel that's special. It seems foreign and to slide in and out of sanity, but yet, somehow, each piece is in its perfect, synergistic place.
Page 136, paragraph two. In this snippet Bromden elaborates on Pete; no matter how much harder, how much more effort Pete puts in to living “right in the world of men”, he just can’t get it right. Kesey’s work at the Veteran’s Hospital in Oregon must have enlightened him to this plight. Kesey had a lot of success: awards, scholarships, and fellowships. No doubt there were men there that society wanted to have relegated to a confined, “nurturing” place. Mr. Kesey himself said that these men were not insane, but simply didn’t fit into the mold.
Reading through some past comments, I felt compelled to agree that all of the trippy moments in the book are what set it apart to be solely Kesey’s. Ken Kesey’s participation in CIA-funded projects and subsequent use of hallucinogenic drugs surely gave him a new peephole in life, and furthered his ability to write the novel we’re reading. However, how many people were taking LSD or acid in the 60’s? Were Kesey’s trips more vivid or boggling or ridiculous than everyone elses’? These experiences made “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” unlike anything a sober author could have written, true. But, at least to me, the drug use is not what makes Kesey such an incredible artist. Aren’t we discounting his natural talent to compose great literature if we say that the hallucinogenic drugs in Kesey’s system are what make Cuckoo’s Nest unique? Kesey has a style that is all his own; I want to sit down to dinner with him because of his creative, astounding skills as an author first of all, and then, maybe, talk about a few of his Acid Tests.
Woessner 7
It was tough to narrow it down to just one paragraph in this book that is specific to Kesey’s writing techniques, because this book is full of it. But, the selection that I picked out of this book is on page 28, paragraph number 4 that is not indented. I chose this paragraph because it really stood out to me how far in depth that Kesey went in describing Miss Ratched’s appearance in her nurse uniform. He really used a lot of interesting terms to relate her body to different things throughout the book, and especially in this paragraph.
I think only Kesey could have described Miss Ratched the way he did. It is interesting how he describes her uniform as a “smooth, accurate, precision-made machine.” Everything he says in this paragraph is very unique and clever. When talking about her emotion, he relates it back to the machine-like uniform. He says that “down inside of her she’s tense as steel,” and that Bromden knows it because he can feel it. I think only Kesey would have this style of writing. He talks about her body a couple times as being fake, and in this paragraph he specifically says “she walks around with that same doll smile crimped between her chin and her nose.” He also talks about how much attention to detail Miss Ratched has. He states that “The slightest thing messy or out of kilter or in the way ties her into a little white knot of tight-smiled fury.” That is a very clever way to just say that if something is out of the ordinary, she gets mad. Kesey’s techniques and wording throughout this book are very unique and very important, and only he could write this way. He sure does have a different way of writing.
Page 163, third full paragraph, beginning with “I walked…”
Though some people could describe how it would be to smell burnt oak leaves, the odor has never graced my nostrils. Ken Kesey knowing how the leaves were treated without even seeing them and being able to have Chief Bromden tell the reader how something that he has not encountered in 20+ years would be is unimaginable to a city boy like myself. The fact that someone may leave leaves to smolder may be hard to believe for me, the confidence in how Bromden states they were still burning tells me that Kesey also knew how objects were to be left in the wilderness.
Kesey’s knowledge on how this area changes so quickly and how the smells of silage would saturate the air surprises me. To include knowledge that a normal reader would overlook shows that when Kesey wrote this novel he knew exactly how to feel and how to relate it to his audience. Feeling the cold mesh on one’s face is always an enjoyable experience, however, for someone that has no memory of how it feels, Bromden immediately immerses himself in it and pushes both cheeks against the grating, taking in all of it. For a man that fears having to sit in group meetings and would rather hide away in his fog, he finds the oddest things to fall in love with and trust.
Though the paragraph leaves little insight on how imaginative Ken was, I thought the other aspects dominated the rest of the book. Only a man like Kesey, someone that is one-of-a-kind, could take a character that has been built up to be fearful and cagey, and take them for one instance away from it all and allow even a person with a challenged situation to escape his world and be back where his people were before. Ken Kesey writes about whatever he pleases, at any time, within this book and it shows when he throws in a contradiction to all of the previous thoughts that the reader may have had about a person in the book. Kesey could not be duplicated and never shall be, for his thoughts that go through may make you question if he is writing about people with mental challenges or if he is telling you how his life feels.
Gingles 7
I like the excerpt from page 108, paragraph 5. This is amazing because he is able to demonstrate the type of dictatorship that Ratchet has over the hospital. Everyone is so afraid to talk because “silence rears up from out of the nurse and looms over everybody, daring anybody to challenge it.” I enjoy the personification used for the silence. Most everyone has experienced this kind of silence before. Everyone wants to challenge it but nobody dares to. It entraps us and binds our tongues so that we cannot object. This kind of silence is one that is quite palpable. Finally at the end of the paragraph we read that Cheswick is bold enough to break the silence. He does it “before he knows what happened”. I think that we all have done something gutsy by doing it quickly before our mind says no. Cheswick was able to satisfy his id. The id was speaking up to nurse Ratchet and the superego was to stay quiet. I think that Kesey believed it was good to satisfy the id. Perhaps this is why he experimented so much with LSD.
Garrow 1
I chose to write about the “Monopoly Chapter” on pages 114 to 116. As I read this, and we discussed about it in class I realized how incredible of a chapter this really is. These three pages can leave you in incredible confusion because of how random it really is. Ken Kesey is brilliant. He knows what Monopoly is all about. One winner, the rest are left to bankruptcy and wondering how fast it is to lose it all. There is one winner in this book and right now I see it as Nurse Ratched. She knows the control that she has, and the rest know it too. I know for a fact that only Kesey could have put this random chapter in, I would have never thought of just a simple board game like monopoly to resemble the world and how there is only one real winner in this world and it is people who win the genetic lottery or who are born in a mansion. He sees that and that is why it is unreal how he puts a major twist on the reader’s brain and makes you realize the hostility of what is actually going on at this mental institution. Kesey writes, “The game goes round and round, to the rattle of dice and the shuffle of play money.” I believe that is symbolic for how the institution is. The institution has been going round and round, being ran the same way every single day. The rattling brains of the humans trapped in this fog that Chief talks about, but what do they do? They keep shuffling along as if no one wants to shuffle up what has been happening. I believe Kesey has also written this chapter for other reasons such as foreshadowing so it should be interesting to read on and then look back to see if anything matches up.
Sternburg 7
Because I cannot decide on which one, I picked three similar passages that I feel only Kesey could have written. The sections are the first full paragraph on page 96, the fourth paragraph on page 110, and the last paragraph on page 142. Each of these passages is an instance where McMurphy has succeeded in getting the best of Nurse Ratched causing to break her robotic nature and show some frustration. I think that Kesey is the only person that could have written these parts because very few people have so thoroughly “stuck it to the man.” Based on his Wikipedia biography it seems that he spent much of his life going against the grain, and living life the way he wanted to live it. During his years of hippiedom I imagine he accrued the essential hippie skills of identifying the establishment and sabotaging the “machine.” The way he describes Miss Ratched’s doll like face, robotic coldness, and manipulative attacks convinces me that Kesey has paid close attention to what makes clockwork people like her tick. Also the unique way he describes her when she is flustered shows me that he knew how to get under the establishment’s skin. Take for instance the slight twitch she does when she’s angry or the way she her phony smile can be as intimidating as a scowl.
In addition to his vast experience taking on the “man,” his writing ability makes these passages specific to him. While other members of the counterculture could have the same experiences, very few were able to express their thoughts and ideas into such powerful writing.
Because of his counterculture experience and his ability to write about it, I believe that the instances where McMurphy battles Miss Ratched could only be written by Kesey.
First off, I shall begin by saying that I believe the statement "only Kesey could have written" to be completely wrong. Sure it's different than what most people have written and experienced, but that by no means dictates that no one else wrote, writes, or will write nothing like it. I think it to be quite absurd.
However, I did find one excerpt of the book that caught my attention. The last and first paragraph of pages 4 and 5 in particular jumped out at me. The way Keyey describes Chief Bromden's hallucination of Nurse Ratched strangling the black boys is fascinating. It's incredibly aggravating at first because you don't know if it's real or not, then you read something completely different and wonder if that was real while still trying to decide whether or not the first one was real. Even what is supposed to be real is often times seen as not real. It's infuriating, yet its awe inspiring. His descriptions of these events are so vivid and complete, it's like dreaming about it in your own bed at 11:54 PM. And these descriptions themselves can be aggravating. They can drone on and on and on without any break of action to keep it interesting. These things never stop as if they were a part of Nurse Ratched's body itself, swelling up to unimaginable, inhuman sizes.
Getting back to the book itself, especially enjoy the fact that he wrote this entire story like Bromden was telling someone about this after it happened like a group of gossip girls on the playground at recess. It offers such valuable insight into the situations that play out in the novel that you couldn't get from just a plain ol' narration.
This whole book stands out from the masses as a true masterpiece. His delivery through symbolic and descriptive, yet aggravating and confusing hallucinations brings me closer to the characters than I even wanted to.
Ken Kesey is an exceptional individual who has lived an extremely eventful life. From the wrestling champ to the chronic drug user Kesey has seen and done it all. This is why he can enlighten his readers with such elaborate and masterful descriptions of the mind of an unstable man. I do not believe anyone else could have done such a masterful job. On page 216 Kesey displays his art in the third and fourth paragraphs. This is where the chief views the painting of the man fishing in the mountains. Bromden then hallucinates, believing that he himself was in the painting, feeling the air, and smelling the pine. This is a brief hallucination but really describes a lot about the chief as he induced the hallucination with a familiar happy feeling of fishing. Kesey was subject to a government testing of many hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD, mushrooms, and many other experimental drugs. Therefore no one else could as accurately depicted the experience. Kesey’s experience with the drugs has allowed him to view the world in a completely different lense. He can relate more with the mentally unstable and their personal trauma and perspective on life. He can relate the struggle Chief Bromden has with the big nurse and the entire mental ward with the counter culture in the 1960’s. Kesey was one of the heads of this movement that rejected the “man” and the law of the land, this is similar to the chief’s struggle because he is being oppressed by the authority figure.
Pruett 5
This book, written in a truly unique matter, is one that I believe will be considered a classic for many years to come. There is an abundance of excerpts that are true to Kesey and Kesey alone. One that stands out in particular to me is the paragraphs on page 201. "She started popping her mouth and looking for her black boys, scared to death, but he stopped before he got to her. He stopped in front of her window and he said in his slowest, deepest brawl how he figured he could use one of the smokes he bought this mornin', then ran his hand through the glass."
"The glass came apart like water splashing, and the nurse threw her hands to her ears. He got one of the cartons of cigarettes with his name on it and took out a pack, then put it back and turned to where the Big Nurse was sitting like a chalk statue and very tenderly went to brushing the slivers of glass off her head and shoulders."
"'I'm sure sorry, ma'am,' he said. 'Gawd but I am. That window glass was so spick and span I com-pletely forgot it was there.'"
These paragraphs are masterfully written to show the true relationship between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched, as well as showing symbolism. McMurphy and Nurse Ratched are the two alpha males of the ward, and therefore constantly fight. Although McMurphy is a patient and at the mercy of Ratched, he is still able to hold his own against her in these battles. This captures the readers attention, keeping them interested enough to keep reading to find out who will win the war in the long run. Kesey's symbolism is magnificent in these paragraphs as well. The glass, meant to symbolize the order and stability of the asylum, as well as Nurse Ratched, shatters when punched by McMurphy. McMurphy, by doing this, has shown that Miss Ratched's totalitarian rule is not impossible to undermine, and that she is more flawed than she will ever admit. When the patients realize that her iron rule has holes in it, they begin to become more daring. This was all due to the actions of McMurphy.
Tellinghuisen 5
It amazes me how incredibly well this book is written. Kesey’s genius shines on every page. He takes something so complicated and misunderstood, and turns it into a literary masterpiece. How does one write an insane person, or for that matter, every thought and nuance of a man who has paranoid schizophrenia, and is our narrator? How can you write that successfully while still achieving sheer and utter greatness in the mind of literary critiques everywhere? Kesey achieves just that and more, and he demonstrates that immediately on page 7, second paragraph:
“The least black boy and one of the bigger ones catch me before I get ten steps out of the mop closet, and drag me back to the shaving room. I don’t fight or make any noise. If you yell it’s just tougher on you. I hold back the yelling. I hold back till they get to my temples. I’m not sure it’s one of those substitute machines and not a shaver till it gets to my temples; then I can’t hold back. It’s not a will-power thing anymore when they get to my temples. It’s a . . . button, pushed, says Air Raid Air Raid, turns me on so loud it’s like no sound, everybody yelling at me, hands over their ears from behind a glass wall, faces working around in talk circles but no sound from the mouths. My sound soaks up all other sound. They start the fog machine again and it’s snowing down cold and white all over me like a skim milk, so thick I might even be able to hide in it if they didn’t have a hold on me. I can’t see six inches in front of me through the fog and the only thing I can hear over the wail I’m making is the Big Nurse whoop and charge up the hall while she crashes patients outta her way with that wicker bag. I hear her coming but I still can’t hush my hollering. I holler till she gets there. They hold me down while she jams wicker bag and all into my mouth and shoves it down with a mop handle.”
I feel like I am there with Chief Bromden, experiencing his horror with him. This passage along with many others is evidence of how well Kesey wrote this book. He brings imagery and a level of tangibility to a disease, and issue most of us could never dream of experiencing, or want to. The mind of an insane person.
Oddy 2
Being exceptionally late on this assignment, I'll try to compensate by hopefully going a little bit deeper than my class mates before me.
The excerpt that really stood out to me was on page 133. The whole page was filled with descriptive imagery of Chief's hallucinations but two paragraphs really stood out to me. "I can hear them out there, trying to go on with the meeting, talking some nonsense about Billy Bibbit's stutter and how it came about. The words come to me like through water, it's so thick. In fact it's so much like water it floats me right up out of my chair and I don't know which end is up for a while. Floating makes me a little sick to the stomach at first. I can't see a thing. I never had it so thick it floated me like this.
The words get dim and loud, off and on, as I float around, but as loud as they get, loud enough sometimes I know I'm right next to the guy that's talking, I still can't see a thing."
Kesey continues even after this passage with Chief's hallucination and in my opinion, while maybe not only Kesey could have written this, only someone who has experienced a different state of mind would have written this. It connects sensations that the average person would not normally be able to depict otherwise. This leads me to another point I think is necessary to be brought up. I don't think it is fair to say anything that Kesey wrote could only have been created by him. In the class we have some strange obsession with Kesey as if he is the only one in the world to experience a different state of mind when this is wholly not the case. It's rather common knowledge that many people in the general public have experimented (or even use frequently) the drugs that Kesey was under the influence of in his life. While Kesey might have had a different experience than others, and was one of the first people to publish a book based on these experiences, I think that we should be in awe over the human mind in general (when talking about the aspect of different states of mind) instead of idolizing one man for the drugs that he did.
On page 133 paragraph 3 Chief is explaining how it feels to be devoured by the fog. I feel that only Kesey could write something as descriptive as that. He gets deeply into detail about how the air is thick with water and he is drowning in it. So much that he’s chair is floating and he talks about how floating makes him sick. Ken Kesey is the only one possible to write something like this because he probably knows what this feels like. I mean he has had experience with drugs like LSD. It was so realistic that I could imagine it happening to me as I was reading it. As if I was being engulfed in fog to a point where I couldn’t see or hear anything. He draws the readers in so easily just by using the right words. The fog is symbolic and it shows up throughout the entire book, but I feel that it was written superlative here. The fog shows how unstable, mentality wise, Chief is.
“The words get dim and loud, off and on, as I float around, but as loud as they get, loud enough sometimes I know I’m right next to the guy that’s talking, I still can’t see.”—Chief
He talks about how he can’t see anything. This is also only something Kesey could have written because he captures the essence of the fog. You are feeling the story as you are reading it not just reading.
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