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Ken Kesey

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Mass Market Paperback – February 1, 1963

by Ken Kesey (Author)

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An international bestseller and the basis for the hugely successful film, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is one of the defining works of the 1960s.

In this classic novel, Ken Kesey’s hero is Randle Patrick McMurphy, a boisterous, brawling, fun-loving rebel who swaggers into the world of a mental hospital and takes over. A lusty, life-affirming fighter, McMurphy rallies the other patients around him by challenging the dictatorship of Nurse Ratched. He promotes gambling in the ward, smuggles in wine and women, and openly defies the rules at every turn. But this defiance, which starts as a sport, soon develops into a grim struggle, an all-out war between two relentless opponents: Nurse Ratched, backed by the full power of authority, and McMurphy, who has only his own indomitable will. What happens when Nurse Ratched uses her ultimate weapon against McMurphy provides the story’s shocking climax.

“BRILLIANT!”—Time

“A SMASHING ACHIEVEMENT...A TRULY ORIGINAL NOVEL!”—Mark Schorer

“Mr. Kesey has created a world that is convincing, alive and glowing within its own boundaries...His is a large, robust talent, and he has written a large, robust book.”—Saturday Review

Print length

272 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Berkley
Publication date

February 1, 1963
Dimensions

4.25 x 0.87 x 7.5 inches
ISBN-10

0451163966
ISBN-13

978-0451163967
Lexile measure

1040L
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

“A work of genuine literary merit...What Mr. Kesey has done in his unusual novel is to transform the plight of a ward of inmates in a mental hospital into a glittering parable of good and evil.”—The New York Times Book Review

“[A] brilliant first novel...a strong, warm story about the nature of human good and evil...Keysey has made his book a roar of protest against middlebrow society's Rules and the invisible Rulers who enforce them.”—Time

“The final triumph of these men at the cost of a terrifying sacrifice should send chills down any reader's back....This novel's scenes have the liveliness of a motion picture.”—The Washington Post

“An outstanding book...[Kesey's] characters are original and real....This is a tirade against the increasing controls over man and his mind, yet the author never gets on a soap box. Nor does he forget that there is a thin line between tragedy and comedy.”—Houston Chronicle

About the Author

Ken Kesey (1935-2001) grew up in Oregon. He graduated from the University of Oregon and later studied at Stanford with Wallace Stegner, Malcolm Cowley, Richard Scowcroft, and Frank O' Connor. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, his first novel, was published in 1962. His second novel, Sometimes a Great Notion, followed in 1964. His other books include Kesey's Garage Sale, Demon Box, Caverns (with O. U. Levon), The Further Inquiry, Sailor Song, and Last Go Round (with Ken Babbs). His two children's books are Little Tricker the Squirrel Meets Big Double the Bear and The Sea Lion.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Berkley (February 1, 1963)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Mass Market Paperback ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0451163966
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0451163967
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1040L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 7 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.25 x 0.87 x 7.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #3,852 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #9 in Classic American Literature
- #130 in Classic Literature & Fiction
- #479 in Literary Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
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Ken Kesey

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Ken Kesey was born in Colorado in 1935. He founded the Merry Pranksters in the sixties and became a cult hero, a phenomenon documented by Tom Wolfe in his book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. He died in 2001.

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4.7 out of 5

9,750 global ratings

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4 star		13%
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Keri Gradeless

*****

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 5, 2023

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One of my favorite books of all time ❤️❤️❤️

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 26, 2016

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Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" was one of the most powerful books I have ever read. Although the story takes place mainly in a mental hospital, its ramifications can be felt in all of the broader society. The struggles depicted in the various characters, both internally and inter-personally, will give the reader pause and perhaps change your perception on life.

The story at its core encompasses the struggle between the individual (portrayed by Randall McMurphy) and the establishment (Portrayed by nurse Ratched.) It is told through the eyes of the schizophrenic half-Indian known as Chief Bromden. Bromden has pretended to be deaf and dumb for so long that everyone takes this fact for granted. It also allows him to overhear comments from the staff that others would not. The Chief is an interesting choice as narrator, and at times it seemed like he was rambling on about nothing. Unreliable narrators can be a touchy thing, but Kesey is able to navigate his way through the Chief's mind, and in time we find his ramblings have a purpose. He views the establishment as a machine, which he refers to as "the combine." He speaks of fog machines, wires in the walls, and robotic people, and views them as part of the combine. Even the name of the nurse, Ratched, sounds almost like "ratchet," which is a common tool. The Chief sees the struggle between the Big Nurse, as he calls Ratched, and McMurphy, and even though he has a sense right away that McMurphy is different, Bromden doesn't hold out much hope. After all, the combine is a massive machine and the Chief knows what it did to him. Bromden tells McMurphy he "used to be big," but not any more. The Chief's mother, a white woman from town, along with the government, broke down both he and his father and became bigger than both of them put together.

The antagonist is Ratched, an ex-army nurse who rules the ward with an iron fist. She preys on the weaknesses of the patients and attacks them in those areas. She is all about control and power, and over her long career has devised many ways of projecting this with a cold, machine-like efficiency. Ratched has hand picked her staff based on their cruelty and submissiveness. The Chief calls her "The Big Nurse," which reminds me of Orwell's Big Brother, and mentions early on that "The Big Nurse tends to get real put out if something keeps her outfit from running like a smooth, accurate, precision-made machine" (pg 24). Indeed the Chief sees her as a machine, part of the combine who's purpose is to make others small. Ratched represents the oppressive nature and de-humanization present in modern society.

And then there is Randle McMurphy. Sent to the ward from a work farm (because it's "easier" time), McMurphy comes in loud and confident. His singing and laughter are something new for the patients so used to suppressing their emotions. And he is definitely not the kind of patient the mechanical and repressive Nurse Ratched wants. It only takes McMurphy one group session to see Ratched's method of exposing the patient's weakest areas and pecking them into submission. Harding, the subject of the group meetings earlier frenzy, explains that it was all therapeutic. McMurphy, however, gives Harding his perception: "what she is is a ball-cutter. I've seen a thousand of 'em...people who try to make you weak so they can get you to...live like they want you to. And the best way to do this...is to weaken you by gettin' you where it hurts the worst" (pg 56). So McMurphy, ever the gambling man, makes a bet with his fellow patients that he would be able to make Ratched lose her composure, and he accomplished this by using her own tactics against her. As he pulls Bromden and the others out of the "fog" and makes them big again, McMurphy unwittingly becomes the savior of his fellow patients. It did not go un-noticed that the electroshock table was cross-shaped with the patient restrained by the wrists and feet and a "crown" placed over his head. When McMurphy rips Nurse Ratched's tightly starched uniform and exposes her breasts, he is symbolically exposing her hypocrisy and breaking the power she had once wielded over the patients. Chief Bromden's final act of mercy cemented Nurse Ratched's fall as well as giving McMurphy the dignity that he had earned.

Perhaps the largest piece of advice I pulled from this novel is to never let anyone or anything take your individuality. Society in general would like to have everyone fit into the same mold because then the people are easier to predict and control. However, we all need a McMurphy in our lives to show us that we can still be individuals and fit into society. And when The Combine tries to weaken you and make you conform, just throw your head back and laugh like McMurphy, "because he knows you have laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy" (pg 233).

112 people found this helpful

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Daniel Hirst

American classic

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 30, 2015

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This is an amazing book. I didn’t read this until I hit thirty; the reason for this being I thought less of it due to having seen the film. The film is not bad, but for me One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s nest was its film version, full stop. I eventually decided to read the book after learning about the interesting life its author Ken Kesey lived, including that he wrote much of this book while working at a mental hospital.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest deals with the relationship between freedom and power, and about how mental illness develops when the power of others dominates an individual to such a great extent that he/she can no longer act free. The individuals in the hospital are shown by Kesey to be lacking in courage and self-belief, and demonstrate an unwillingness to act without permission and approval. While the hospital should be making patients better it actually makes them worse by actively discouraging attempts to be assertive and by labelling any attempt to act free from the constraints of institutional power as symptomatic of a worsening of the underlying disorder.

The book is told through the eyes of Chief Bowden: a part Indian man that has spent a long time in the hospital pretending to be deaf and mute. Through the subjective experiences of the Chief, Kesey presents the actual experiences of mental illness. Kesey in doing this dismisses the notion that mental illness is unreal but reveals how its treatment is sometimes abused to keep people in line. Chief Bowden experiences things through metaphorical hallucinations. For example, when speaking of the power held by the Big Nurse, he literally sees wires running from her office into the bodies of those that she controls. This conception of mental illness is similar to that found in R.D Laing’s book the Divided Self: the mentally ill person is someone that cannot face the pain of reality and retreats into their own realm, but reality still intrudes via metaphorical representations.

Throughout the novel Chief Bowden focuses on the power struggle taking place between Randle McMurphy and the Big Nurse. McMurphy is not in hospital voluntarily but has committed an offence which landed him on a work farm. He is transferred to the mental hospital partly of his own design to escape drudgery. McMurphy immediately emerges as a threat to the Big Nurse due to his willingness to question process and act without fear. He is not scared of authority and does not censor himself when confronted with the subtle shaming techniques of the Big Nurse.

The Big Nurse effectively runs the hospital. She is shown through the subjective eye of Chief Bowden to be solely concerned with maintaining her grip of power over the hospital. She is obsessed with process; she pretends to enforce process for the therapeutic value that the processes have on the patients, when in reality she loves the process because it is her process and provides her with a sense of security and power.

The interactions between McMurphy and Big Nurse question the extent to which people can be free. Sartre once argued that individuals are totally free so that even if facing the death penalty we are free to defy the executioners by mentally not accepting their interpretation of events and the descriptions placed on them. McMurphy is a Sartrean hero as he does not allow the views of others and the subtle attempts to shun and devalue him dictate how he behaves. However, as the book plays out Kesey demonstrates that living in this manner may not lead to a life of pleasure or fame but may involve the free person being crushed by power structures and processes that do not appreciate the questioning of where power lies.

I would argue that One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s nest offers a modern presentation of the story found in the New Testament. Like Christ, McMurphy questions the powers of his time: in this case psychiatry and bureaucratic process rather than the Jewish religious leaders. Like Christ he questioned the intentions of the powers that be and acted as a free human rather than someone embarrassed by their true nature. Moreover, like Christ, McMurphy suffers at the hands of an authority that pretends to be in place for the concern of the many when in reality it gives power to the few, and in suffering on the Cross gives the weak a lasting sense of freedom.

See my other reviews at amateurreviewspace.blogspot.com

29 people found this helpful

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KN

So much more than I had expected...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 4, 2020

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I have always loved the movie of this book but have only just got around to reading it. In some ways the screen version has more emotional punch, particularly at the end, driven in part by Nicholson’s mesmerising performance. The book, however, is far more textured and layered - I was not expecting the richness of the Chief’s narrative: the echoes of a lost way of life and the powerful extended metaphor of a new way of life like some enormous machine or ‘combine’ controlling people. It has a romantic edge - a warning of the turning away from the land, a warning against institutional control. A beautiful book, elegiac in tone, one I will return to in the future to fully appreciate the scope of its vision.

15 people found this helpful

R T Twinem

A book that still retains the magic

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 10, 2017

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Can it really be 50 years since the publication of this book, I remember my first reading in the mid 70's and it has been a great pleasure, and a walk down memory lane, to once again make the acquaintance of the residents of an Oregon Psychiatric Hospital and in particular one Randle P McMurphy. Most people will remember the 1976 movie and the electric performance of Jack Nicholson as the audacious and colourful "Mack", in a movie that won many awards. The book has lost none of its magic even now reading the it so many years later, and the emotions that it can produce are still very real.

McMurphy is moved to the mental institution from a prison farm where he was serving a sentence for the rape of a 15 year old girl. Although he is not mentally ill, he is hoping to avoid hard labour and serve the rest of his sentence in a relaxed environment. The life of the rest of the inmates is now turned on its head as McMurphy proceeds to wreck havoc in an attempt to control and alter the mundane existence of lethargic and inactive inmates...."We are lunatics from the hospital up the highway, psychoceramics, the cracked pots of mankind."....The only obstacle standing between Mack and his dreams is the formidable figure of the steely strict Nurse Ratched....."Her face is still calm, as though she had a cast made and painted to just the look she wants. Confident, patient, and unruffled."...

The story is told in the first person through the eyes of one long term resident Chief Bromden a tall native American believed to be deaf and mute. Through a series of minor misdemeanours and coercion McMurphy is hoping to breakdown the stranglehold of power that Nurse Rached holds over the inmates, who are dulled and kept under control by the constant and daily consumption of medication. It would therefore appear that the prime function of the institution is to manage, by this use of drugs, the minds and temperaments of the residents, rather than try to rehabilitate them and reintroducing them back into society where they might once again make a useful contribution. If the use of drugs and stimulants fails to pacify the disturbed mind the institution is willing to apply electroshock therapy and in the most severe cases a lobotomy is performed.

This is a book fully entrenched in the methods and institutions of its time. It is also a story of power and authority, those who wheel it and those who would attempt to question it by any means possible. It is a wonderful and colourful narration, strong and memorable characters, essentially funny yet ultimately sad. To me Randle P McMurphy is more than a comic figure, he chooses to question the reality and sense of his surroundings and by doing so set himself on the road to confrontation with the soulless Nurse Ratched and ultimately there can only be one winner, and an ending that is both shocking and captivating. Highly Recommended.

23 people found this helpful

Miss K. Southern

There were moments while reading that I felt like it was a true masterpiece

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 26, 2018

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I had to think about things for a long time before I got round to deciding how to rate this book. There were moments while reading that I felt like it was a true masterpiece, and there were moments that I felt uninterested and quite confused. I have actually seen both the film and the play (both of which I loved) in action before reading, so I already had a very clear idea of how the story played out, but I don't think my feelings would be different if I was coming into reading the book with fresh eyes. Randle Patrick McMurphy was such a character and despite his obviously devilish, sneaky ways I fell for him as soon as he entered the book. Meanwhile, Nurse Ratched is probably one of the most terrifying villains I've ever come across in a book and I'm finding it tough to imagine any character ever beating her in this. Her calm, icy demeanour played off against McMurphy's fiery, quick-thinking personality perfectly and I adored watching them try to outsmart each other. These two were an example of perfect characterisation and I thought it particularly meaningful that the 'hero' was a conniving petty criminal, and the villain a supposedly charitable nurse who dedicates her life to 'helping' people. Chief Bromden was an interesting character but I wish less time had been dedicated to his slightly bizarre thoughts/memories and he'd had a little more to do. Kesey wrote well enough and built his world spectacularly also, but I'm afraid to say the overall message didn't wash so well with me. There is a lot of very racist, misogynistic language to be found in this novel and it has a very clearly symbolised anti-feminist tone that also conveyed a lot of hatred towards society as a whole. A lot of this was left out of the aforementioned film and play and so I didn't realise quite what I was getting myself into until I started reading. Although I think this book was cleverly written and did bring some brilliant moments to the table, it lost itself in the message it was trying to convey.

12 people found this helpful

MC

Impossible to read.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 25, 2021

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I bought a brand new copy so the condition was absolutely fine, unlike many of the negative reviews here which seem to be based on the condition of the book or the grammar.
I read the introduction and then got twenty paged into the actual story before deciding to give up, I don't know exactly how to describe the way the book is written but I find it pretty much impossible to read. Reading should be a pleasure and keep you engaged, this book is neither and is an effort and a chore to read. The movie was great, I would advise anybody to simply watch the movie rather than attempt to read this book.

3 people found this helpful

Keiran McAllister

Good in parts.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 17, 2021

Verified Purchase

The book by Ken Kesey popped up on kindle deals for £0.99 and I thought it would be worth a read.
I found that it was a good read until the fishing trip. This thanks to kindle speak was at 78%, quite a long way in.
At that point I just failed to make sense of the novel. Here's Randle McMurphy the principal character who is in the mental hospital as a convicted criminal serving a jail term. Therefore in mental hospital to assess his mental state but all the same a serving prisoner who had been sent from a penitentiary. Then off he goes taking a party of other hospital patients on a fishing trip basically unsupervised although the doctor jumps on the trip at the last minute, not to supervise but to enjoy the trip.
OK, I know it's a story etc etc, but come on this could never happen even in dream land.
It spoiled the book and my day for me. I'd read 78% and I was engaged and enjoying the tale, then well, shame for me, all ruined.
Anyway, if you can handle the perverse event in the story the book may appeal to you. It is well written from a prose and event flowing angle. Mr Kesey also makes the characters come alive and seem realistic. But for me that fishing trip ruined it.

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