Point of View in Ken Keseys One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest Essay

Point of View in Keseys virtuoso Flew everyplace the Cuckoos Nest The choice that a novelist fares in deciding the point of look out for a novel is hardly a minor one. Few authors make the decision to use first person autobiography by supplementary character as hatful Kesey does in One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. By choosing Bromden as narrator instead of the central character of Randle Patrick McMurphy, Kesey gives us narration that is objective, that is to say from the outside of the central character, and also narration that is subjective and distinctly unreliable. The paranoia and dementia that fill Bromdens narration set a tone for the assay for liberation that is the theme of the story. It is also this choice of narrator that leads the reader to curio at the conclusion whether the story was actually that of McMurphy or Bromden. Keseys choice of account technique makes One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest a successful novel. It would be hard to ignore biographical informat ion when analyzing a work by Ken Kesey, because of both his involvement with the Beat writers and as an advocate for psychotropic drugs. In fact, it is said that Kesey created the narrator of One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest during a peyote hallucination, when an Indian came to him (Tanner 21). While his choice of the Indian, a supposed desensitize mute, as narrator seems out of the norm it is even more so when comparing Kesey to the other Beat writers. McMurphy can be compared closely to dean Moriarty of Jack Kerouacs On The Road, only if Bromden is nothing like Kerouacs narrator, Sal Paradise. Certainly the gimcrack and boisterous McMurphy would have made for an interesting narrator for this novel but this would have provided for a very different ending. Even the... ...oos Nest. Ed. George J. Searles. Albuquerque Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1992. 5-11. Hunt, keister W. Flying the Cuckoos Nest Keseys Narrator as Norm. Lex et Scientia 13 (1977) 27-32. Rpt. in A Casebook on Ken Keseys One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. Ed. George J. Searles. Albuquerque Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1992. 13-23. Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. New York Signet, 1962. Martin, Terence. One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest and the High price of Living. Modern Fiction Studies. 19 (1973) 43-55. Rpt. in A Casebook on Ken Keseys One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. Ed. George J. Searles. Albuquerque Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1992. 25-39. Semino, Elena and Kate Swindlehurst. Metaphor and mind sort in Ken Keseys One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest. Style 30 (1996) 143-67. Tanner, Stephen L. Ken Kesey. Boston Twayne, 1983.