Ken Kesey

Boisterous, ribald, and ultimately shattering, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is the seminal novel of the 1960s that has left an indelible mark on the literature of our time. Here is the unforgettable story of a mental ward and its inhabitants, especially the tyrannical Big Nurse Ratched and Randle Patrick McMurphy, the brawling, fun-loving new inmate who resolves to oppose her. We see the struggle through the eyes of Chief Bromden, the seemingly mute half-Indian patient who witnesses and understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the awesome powers that keep them all imprisoned.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

The suicide left its own mark on Kesey, who had witnessed a man willing to make the greatest sacrifice in honor of a way of life, a way of life that no developer could buy from him. In a perverse way, the Indian embodied Thoreau's vigw that "in wildness is the preservation of the world." The dam represents machinery that destroys one way of life in service to another. 

He’s got hands so long and white and dainty I think they carved each other out of soap

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest quotes

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