Book Report One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Ken Kesey was born in 1935, he died in 2001. He was raised in Oregon though he was born in Colorado. He attended Stanford University. He worked as an attendant in a hospital’s psychiatric ward which was the basis for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. He was briefly put in jail for possession of marijuana and was very much a part of the beatnik generation. He married his high school sweetheart Faye Haxby and had four kids. FORM, STRUCTURE, AND PLOT One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is divided into four parts then further divided into chapters that vary drastically in length. The book has 325 pages with small print. Kesey uses flashbacks frequently every couple of chapters. There are a few sections with an almost stream of consciousness…show more content…
Though many of them seem dynamic, Bromden is the only one that really changes. The characters are believable; these men are fearful and each react differently to the nurse and to McMurphy. There is a large amount of characters: Chronics, Acutes, staff, outsiders. McMurphy is the main protagonist, but I see Bromden as one as well. Nurse Ratched is the biggest antagonist, but the whole hospital and the way others see these patients are antagonistic forces as well. Randle McMurphy 35 years old. Rambunctious, rebellious, hero. He is a big, red-headed, Irish-American. He is constantly gambling and getting into fights. He functions as the protagonist, he is the second coming of Christ to these patients. “He stands there waiting, and when nobody makes a move to say anything to him he commences to laugh. Nobody can tell exactly why he laughs, there’s nothing funny going on. But it’s not like the way the Public Relation laughs, it’s free and loud and it comes out of his wide grinning mouth and spreads in rings bigger and bigger till it’s lapping against the walls all over the ward (Kesey 12).” This quote reveals McMurphy’s interesting way of dealing with unfortunate situations: by laughing. This idiosyncrasy of his is a recurring image and is what attaches the patients to
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