CliffsNotes on

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

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Book Summary

Ken Kesey Biography

Personal Background
Career Highlights

About One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Summary and Analysis

Part 1: They're Out There
Part 1: When the Fog Clears
Part 1: The New Man
Part 1: In the Glass Station
Part 1: Before Noontime
Part 1: One Christmas
Part 1: First Time for a Long, Long Time
Part 1: Come Morning
Part 1: All Through Breakfast
Part 1: There's a Monopoly Game
Part 1: There's Long Spells
Part 1: A Visiting Doctor
Part 1: It's Getting Hard
Part 1: There's a Shipment of Frozen Parts
Part 1: I Know How They Work It
Part 2: Just at the Edge of My Vision
Part 2: The Way the Big Nurse Acted
Part 2: In the Group Meetings
Part 2: Up Ahead of Me
Part 2: Whatever It Was
Part 2: They Take Me with the Acutes Sometimes
Part 2: I Remember It Was Friday Again
Part 2: Crossing the Grounds
Part 3: After That
Part 3: Two Whores
Part 4: The Big Nurse
Part 4: Up on Disturbed
Part 4: There Had Been Times
Part 4: I've Given What Happened Next

Character List

Character Map

Character Analysis

Randle Patrick McMurphy
Nurse Ratched
Chief Bromden
Dale Harding
Billy Bibbit

Critical Essays

The Role of Women in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: The Film and the Novel
McMurphy as Comic Book Christ
McMurphy's Cinematic Brothers in Rebellion

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Ken Kesey Biography

Career Highlights

Besides One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Kesey went on to write Sometimes a Great Notion (published by Viking in 1964), Kesey's Garage Sale (published by Viking in 1973), The Day After Superman Died (published by Lord John Press in 1980), Demon Box (published by Viking in 1986), The Further Inquiry (published by Viking in 1990), Little Tricker the Squirrel Meets Big Double the Bear (published by Viking in 1990), The Sea Lion (published by Viking in 1991), Sailor Song (published by Viking in 1992), and Last Round Up, with Ken Babbs, (published by Viking in 1994).

Despite the publication of other works, including the novel Sometimes a Great Notion, which became the film Never Give an Inch with Paul Newman and Henry Fonda, Kesey never recaptured the success of his first novel. In the late 1990s, he gathered several surviving members of the Merry Pranksters and drove across the United States in a new version of the bus Further.


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