Lauren Crom Post 2 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

This book just gets weirder as the word count increases.  I want to research the author of this book some—because it appears that he takes these “mini themes” from his own life experiences. 

Kenneth Kesey is the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.   He attended a very prominent school—Stanford University.  He studied in their writing program.  At Stanford he also participated as a test subject in the medical department to earn extra money.  This struck me with a thought—that Kenneth Kesey got some of his themes from the book there.  Maybe the reason Chief Bromden cannot talk is because he was the subject of a medical experiment himself.  This could also be the root reason for why Chief Bromden is working in a hospital, because that is where Kenneth Kesey had most of his horrifying experiences. 

The professional wrestler in Kenneth Kesey could have led to the character of the head nurse.   She portrays a mean, self-centered nurse who wants to take control of everyone in the mental hospital.  She works with weak people because she knows that those are the people whom she can easily control and manipulate.  I am expecting a decline in her character because during the time when Kenneth Kesey qualified as an Olympic wrestler, he became injured and was no longer able to compete.  Thus, the one of the many plots in the story could be to overtake this Olympic woman—to defeat her and overthrow her so she no longer lingers over the patients of the mental asylum. 

Since the chemicals that Stanford was testing on him included some of the most dangerous ones known to man today (including LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline), he was often delusional.   He was reported to have hallucinations of a man of Indian decent sweeping the floors.  Thus, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was born.  Chief Bromden (Bromden because of the resemblance to “broom”) was brought to live through a writing project he was assigned at Stanford. 

He had a hard life.  Kesey often liked to throw parties.  These parties, people reported, were littered with experimental drugs such as the ones that were tested on him during his experience at Stanford.  He became part of a prank group, as well as a band.  Through this hard life, he was put in jail.  He went so far as to fake a suicide to try and escape.  For possessing marijuana after it had been illegalized, Kenneth Kesey was sentenced to five months in the San Mateo jail.  I wonder if Kesey believed that the hospital resembled some sort of a jail; a prison to those inside, and vice versa during his stay at Stanford. 

Overall, I believe that Kesey was one weird man.  I would not willingly experiment drugs just for the sake of things.  This is just crazy.  He ruined his life in a way—while at the same time creating a name for himself because without those loopy drugs he was willingly testing, he wouldn’t have come up with such an odd and unrealistic character as Chief Bromden, or the little lady nurse.