Ryan's Honors Essay

Honors Project Literary Analysis

 

Ken Kesey is regarded by many as a philosopher of the 20^th century. In Kesey’s novels, the common themes of popular culture and societal standards are conveyed to the reader through contemporary and gritty stories. The familiar style of slang and casual English used common to the counter-culture of the 60’s and 70’s makes Kesey’s novels a mirror of the time period. Despite Kesey’s stories being a “mirror of the time period”, his stories shout “unusual expression of anti-Establishment themes, ranging from rebellion against conformity to pastoral retreat” (Sherwood 167). Both of Kesey’s stories One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Sometimes a Great Notion support the changing culture and firmly oppose the conformities and emasculation common to the early and mid-20^th century. Through the use of literary microcosm’s, a counter-force, heated conflicts, and a concluding resolution whether it be peaceful or chaotic Kesey is able to infuse his views into his stories and make One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Sometimes a Great Notion 20^th century cultural icons.

  In both One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Sometimes a Great Notion Ken Kesey uses the creative idea of making a microcosm to reflect how conformed society was before the 60’s counter-culture movement. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Kesey decides that his microcosm should be a mental ward. Kesey never openly states what each character and element is allegorical to in modern society, but by keeping Kesey’s real life experience as a “Merry Prankster” (a 1960’s touring group of radical authors and musicians) in mind it is easy to roughly realize what each character represents and where Kesey’s opinions lie within the ward. From the beginning of the novel the reader is introduced to a Mr. Randall-Patrick McMurphy and it is obvious that he will most likely represent the personification of Kesey’s opinions throughout the book for “This new…McMurphy, knows right away he is not a chronic…he’s meant for the acute side and goes right for it, grinning and shaking hands with everyone he comes to” (Kesey 22). After McMurphy arrives the reader is given a outlook on the “setting…a static institution which sums up both the preoccupation of our age with the mystery of power, and the substitution of an image of the waste land for the image of a journey between Eden and Utopia” (Olderman 267). This outlook of the ward from the eyes of McMurphy gives the reader the realization that McMurphy is a stranger who wants to bring Eden to a regulated Utopia. This Utopia, or even Dystopia is actually a microcosm of society by Kesey. The microcosm of the ward is separated into two groups of patients: the chronics who are beyond hope and the acutes which still have hope for recovery. These two groups could possibly Kesey’s reference to the lame minded conformists, who are represented by the chronics and the individuals of society who think for themselves, who are represented by the Acutes. When the reader goes through the book becoming acquainted with both the ward and the patients of the ward “we suspect with horror that what we are seeing very possibly is our highway of ordinary travel, as fantastic as it may seem” (Olderman 267). Kesey through his microcosm in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest does alert the reader of the problems and need for change there is in modern society.

    Kesey creates a microcosm in Sometimes a Great Notion as well but it is not a definite as the microcosm in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest . In Sometimes A Great Notion the entire story takes place in a small Oregon river valley town. As radical labor unions grow and new logging technologies arrive the Stamper family insists on logging the same way there ancestors have. The Stamper’s stubborn commitment to the old order creates a whole web of characters and conflicts that occur in the small logging town. Eventually the reader feels a connection to the logging town and once again “suspects with horror that what we are seeing very possibly is our highway of ordinary travel, as fantastic as it may seem” (Olderman 267). Kesey is an expert at driving home points with his microcosms and the reader can feel it.

Kesey has to make an antagonist to McMurphy’s efforts to end the conformity in the ward so Kesey makes the representation of the standard 20^th century culture the Big Nurse. Every patient in the ward knows that “The Big Nurse tends to get real put of if something keeps her outfit from running like a smooth, accurate, precision-made machine” (Kesey 30). The idea of McMurphy trying to bring Eden to a Dystopia is brought up again when “McMurphy gives the men not only self-confidence and a renewed sense of virility, but also what Kesey sees as man’s only weapon against the waste-land, laughter” (Olderman 266).The patients are forced to stay conformist to the Big Nurse’s system under fear that the Big Nurse will either send them to the shock-shop (an electrotherapy section of the ward) or drug them up until they are robots under Big Nurse’s control. McMurphy uses laughter to help the patients get their independence back. “Kesey caught the burgeoning mood of an entire generation bound together by a detestation of the encroachments of blind material progress and by a desire for a life based on the impetuous personal feelings rather than on the mandates of success, status, and other future-directed awards” (Hoge 152). Both Kesey and McMurphy walked into a world which they did not like and fought it. McMurphy eventually became completely selfless in the fight for the ward and decided to bring laughter to the ward for the sake of laughter. Kesey fought for Americas radical youth through writing for the sake of writing, Kesey did not desire money or fame. Even till today Kesey lives a simple existence in rural Oregon on a farm.

   In Sometimes a Great Notion Kesey makes the microcosmic representation of early and mid-20^th century culture the Stamper family. The Stampers are an extremely stubborn bunch whose motto is to “Never Give an Inch” (Kesey 11). The Stampers have logged the same conformist way ever since their ancestors arrived in Oregon back in the early 20^th century. Their extreme conformity overshadows the fact that one of the Stampers, Leland is actually a one of Kesey’s representations of the counter-culture movement.

    Kesey makes sure to put intense conflict into his microcosms with the counter-force always representing the just cause. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest McMurphy as already stated is Kesey’s representation of the counter-culture which challenges the early and mid-20^th century ideals of conformity which are personified by Big Nurse. Kesey through McMurphy’s conflict with Big Nurse convinces the reader of the evil of Big Nurse and the early to mid-20^th century. McMurphy when in conversation with Harding even says: “I tell ya, I can’t figure it out. Harding, what’s wrong with you, for crying out loud? You afraid if you raise your hand that old buzzard will cut it off.” “Perhaps I am; perhaps I am afraid she’ll cut it off if I raise it.” (Kesey 107) Eventually the conflict gets to the extent that it affects all of the ward and drives the Big Nurse to break, as evident in this moment where “If somebody’d of come in and took a look, men watching a blank TV, a fifty-year-old woman hollering and squealing at the back of their heads about discipline and order and recreations, they’d of thought the whole bunch was crazy as loons.” (Kesey 128) That scene represents when the dysfunctionality of the ward is brought out through conflict. By the end of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest conflict comes out as accepted in the ward and “The book concludes with a vulgarized truth in the form of a fable.” (Griswold 268) With out the conflict Kesey would have had just a story, not a groundbreaking analysis of human nature.

    The conflicts that Kesey present in Sometimes a Great Notion are very different from the ones in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but the conflicts still share Kesey’s strong sense of retaliation against conformity of the early 20^th century. One of the central conflicts revolves around Leland vs. his own family who challenge his new-age way of thinking and living. In a way this conflict relates best to Kesey’s real life conflicts “against the old structure and old hierarchies.” (Olderman 267) Kesey almost never addressed his conflicts in a peaceful manner, he always took the most conflicting path as evident from his time in the radical Merry Pranksters. Lee’s eldest brother Hank leads the resentment of Lee by saying comments such as: “Men…?” Hang goes on. “Now to the problem at hand: Who’s gonna teach this ere boy to ride a motorcycle an’ doodle a cousin an’ all that sorta thing.” (Kesey 210) While Hank and Leland clash the ideals of separate time periods the Stamper family as a whole is struggling to preserve their way of life as logger unions in the county start to go on strike for higher wages and more modern logging techniques. Kesey makes these unions represent the same counter-culture ideals as Lee through the breaking of standard logger conformist pacifism, to demand better rights for loggers. The conformist Stampers stay stubborn as shown in Hanks statement “which side are you on?” “In this war for life and liberty, which side are you on.” (Kesey 377) For Kesey strong alliances are important “The reader finds Kesey entering the world too uncritically in the defense of the Good.” (Sherwod 167) and it is evident in his conflicting characters.

    Both of Kesey’s novels conclude with a resolution that involves a very Pyrrhic victory for both Big Nurse and the Stampers “Despite their achievements there is disturbance.” (Tanner 162). In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest the entire book revolved around McMurphy fighting the conformity dealt out by Big Nurse and by the end of the book it appears that Big Nurse has beaten McMurphy. McMurphy is even put into shock therapy by Big Nurse where he says “Anoint my head with conductant, do I get a crown of thorns?” Kesey purposely makes McMurphy into a modern martyr for the patients of the ward. As we stated before Kesey is always on the heroes side for “The reader finds Kesey entering the world too uncritically in the defense of the Good.” (Sherwod 167) When McMurphy is found by the Chief as a brain dead vegetable the reader at first sees it as a victory for Big Nurse, but the self confidence and individuality that the patients have gained from McMurphy allows the patients to build up the confidence to start voluntarily checking out of the ward permanently. McMurphy even has an extra victory that the reader ironically does not even realize, Kesey and McMurphy through the story win over the mind of the reader with simple good character and bad character distinctions. The good characters such as McMurphy show the new era of thought in the 60’s as a necessity for happiness, Kesey have even admitted that One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is hippie propaganda. The immense amount of respect that Big Nurse has lost over the ward makes Big Nurse and in worldy terms the early and mid-20^th century the clear loser in the culture battle of the 1960’s.

    The Stamper’s other than Lee also suffer a terrible defeat at the hands of modernity. By the end of Sometimes a Great Notion the Stampers lose their cultural battle to both Lee and the Union Loggers. Since the beginning of Sometimes a Great Notion the Stamper’s one goal was to fill their ridiculously large logging contract with Wakonda Pacific, and the Stampers made sure through the unfaltering stubbornness that no new age Union strikers or college boy was going to stop them from filling their contract. In the long run the Stamper’s were never stopped, but by sticking to their old age conformist ideals Joe Ben Stamper is drowned from a log falling on him and Henry Stamper loses an arm to a falling log. Both of these incidents were products of carelessness due to ridiculously fast logging, to fill the contract of course. At the end of the book after the Wakonda Pacific contract is fulfilled and Lee is observing Hank sulk Lee thinks “I noticed for the first time that Hank was a good two inches shorter than myself.” (Kesey 609) This last line should not be over analyzed, it should just  be taken as a little wink from Kesey that in life the tables are always even, even if you don’t know it for everyone can do anything with a passionate, not stubborn mind set.

    Ken Kesey was a man who was not afraid to voice his opinion through literature, and his two books One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Sometimes a Great Notion clearly show it. Kesey’s two novels were mirrors of the 60’s and 70’s mixed with Kesey’s counter-culture attitude towards the early to mid-20^th century ideals of conformity “Kesey went native, went mad by society’s definition, which labels any man insane who is unable or unwilling to conform.” (Hoge 151) Kesey’s development of a microcosm, counter-culture characters, conflicts, and resolution in the two novels bring forth his opinions to the reader much stronger than any other writer of the time can. Because of their cultural significance Sometimes a Great Notion and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest are iconic works of literature.

 

 

     

 

Ryan Sirlin     3/5/10

Mrs.Davison/per.1   Honors  Project

Honor’s Project Works Cited

 

Doxey, William S. The Explicator (1973): 16. Print.

 

Hodge, James O. "Psychedelic Stimulation and the Creative Imagination: The Case of Ken Kesey." Southern Humanities Review Fall 6.4 (1972): 381-91. Print.

 

Kesey, Ken. One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. Ed. John Clark. Pratt. Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin, 1977. Print.

 

Kesey, Ken. Sometimes a Great Notion. New York: Penguin, 2006. Print.

 

Olderman, Raymond M. "The Grail Night Arrives." Beyond the Waste Land: A Study of the American Novel in the Nineteen-Sixties. Yale UP, 1972. 35-51. Print.

 

Porter, Gilbert M. "Kesey: The Man and the Artist." The Art of Grit: Ken Kesy's Fiction. University of Missouri, 1982. 1-6. Print. Sherwood, Terry G. "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and the Comic Strip." Critique: Studies in Modern Fiction. 1st ed. Vol. 13. 1971. 96-109. Print.

 

Tanner, Stephen L. "Influences and Achievement." Ed. Warren French. Ken Kesey. Boston: Twayne, 1983. 137-44. Print.