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.AlthoughUniversity of Connecticut at Storrs, where the es- some commentators have described McMurphy asteemed Beat scholar Ann Charters later taught, but irresponsible to a fault, he is perhaps best seen as ahe had to resign due to illness.Kerouac, another trickster figure, something completely antitheticaladmirer of Olson, made a pilgrimage to visit Olson to the values of conformist 1950s America, the set-near the end of their lives.From 1950 until Olson s ting of the novel.Kesey s narrator is Chief Brom-death on January 10, 1970, from liver cancer, Olson den, a schizophrenic half Native-American inmateworked on his masterpiece, The Maximus Poems, a at a Portland, Oregon, mental hospital.He is suspi-monumental epic poem that examined Glouces- cious of Nurse Ratched, the Big Nurse, who is inter, Massachusetts, a place of high significance for charge of the Chief s ward.This somewhat unreli-Olson both as a child and as a dying giant of letters.able narrator allows Kesey to create a claustropho-Sanders, one of Olson s poetic heirs, put a section bic and paranoid depiction of the hospital s staff,of the poem to music to be performed by his folk- who represent the conformity-driven society out-rock band The Fugs.Duncan, Creeley, and Dorn side the institution with which all of the inmatesvisited the dying poet near the end.Ginsberg, Wie- must fall in line if they are to fit in. They are, ac-ners, and Sanders attended his funeral.cording to the Chief, the Combine of America.Into this situation comes Randle PatrickBibliography McMurphy, a prisoner at a local labor camp whoClark, Tom.Charles Olson: The Allegory of a Poet s Life.has had himself committed to shirk his duties.Mc-New York: W.W.Norton, 1991.Murphy is the classic American hero, larger thanOlson, Charles. Projective Verse. The New American Po- life and full of contempt for Big Nurse and theetry, 1945 1960, edited by Donald Allen.1960.Re- control she represents.He is also a Beat hero, simi-print, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999, lar to Dean Morarity in JACK KEROUAC s ON THE386 397.ROAD, whose almost excessive exuberance has apositive influence on those around him, even as itKurt Hemmer destroys him.As the novel progresses, McMurphyand Ratched engage in a series of head-to-headconflicts that eventually make the inmates devotedOne Flew over the Cuckoo s Nest disciples of McMurphy and threaten to erode theKen Kesey (1962) control that Ratched has over them.This novel is KEN KESEY s first and most commer- While the inmates such as Chief Bromdencially successful novel.The immediate success of start out as observers of McMurphy s seeminglythis work pushed the young author into the coun- bizarre behavior, they are soon willing participantstercultural spotlight where he would serve as a in his antics.After a series of adventures includingbridge between the earlier Beats and the hippies of a fishing trip, McMurphy is subjected to electro- On the Road 247shock treatments.This torture session makes him urbanite conformity was a major concern for manyinto even more of a Christ figure, suffering for his of the Beat writers.During the 1960s and earlyfollowers.(McMurphy himself asks if he is to re- 1970s Ratched could stand for the establishment ceive a crown of thorns for the session.) Despite against which the hippies were reacting.In thethe electric shocks to his skull, McMurphy returns 1980s and into the 21st century, Ratched can standto his nonconformist activities.To top the fishing for the increasing presence of controlling technol-trip, McMurphy organizes a party, complete with ogy in everyday life.Against all of these symbols foralcohol and prostitutes that are smuggled into the a repressive social structure stands McMurphy, theward.The sexual component to this scene is im- symbol of old-fashioned American individuality atportant for the characters in the novel, who seem the core of the Beat and hippie ethos.to be emasculated.Dale Harding is afraid of his One Flew over the Cuckoo s Nest was adaptedown sexuality despite being married to a beauti- for film in 1975 and directed by Milos Forman.ful woman, and Billy Bibbit is as much under his The film, starring Jack Nicholson as McMurphymother s control as he is under Nurse Ratched s.was a popular and critical success and earned sixAfter their exposure to this wilder side of mascu- Academy Awards.The film is told with McMurphylinity, Dale hatches a plan for escape, and Billy be- as the central character, so Kesey s use of Bromdencomes more assertive.as a schizophrenic, filtering narrator is all but lost.This is not to last, though, as Big Nurse steps The book was also adapted as a play on Broadwayin.Reasserting her control over the inmates, she with Kirk Douglas as McMurphy in 1963.It wasbelittles Billy into a state resembling his earlier later revived by the Steppenwolf Theatre Companychildlike self.This regression pushes Billy to sui- in Chicago in 2001.cide.This precipitates a final confrontation be-tween Ratched and McMurphy, during which Bibliographyhe physically attacks her.In this fight McMurphy Leeds, Barry, Ken Kesey, New York: Unger, 1981.rips open Big Nurse s uniform, revealing her previ- Porter, Gilbert M.The Art of Grit: Ken Kesey s Fiction.ously hidden breasts, symbolically revealing her as Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1982.a real woman rather than a controlling figure.McMurphy is overpowered in the fight by an at- Donovan Braudtendant.His punishment for this violent outburstis severe: a lobotomy
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