Writing in Response to Kesey (Some suggestions)

For those who might have some difficulty getting started writing in response to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, below are a few suggestions for possible topics and starting points.

I also encourage you to draw connections between the supplemental texts I've distributed thus far and will continue to distribute as we cover Kesey's novel. You might also bring other texts we've read this year and any readings you've encountered outside of the work for this class that you feel connect to this novel into your writing.

Some suggestions:

• Select one of the characters discuss how Kesey has developed our understanding of this individual over the first half of the novel. You might focus on the character’s words, actions, and (in the case of Bromden) observations to develop insights into this person’s character, emotions, perspective and motivations. (This could be done through a series of four posts for each of the weeks we will dedicate to Kesey and the beat writers.)

• Discuss what effects Kesey has achieved through his use of stream of consciousness as a rhetorical technique.
  

• One might argue that both Kesey and Orwell write in critique of some established societal structure and cultural movement. (As we've discussed, Kesey was an active and outspoken participant in a number of counter-cultural activities.) Compare the structure and ideology of the dystopia in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four with that of the ward that Kesey presents in his novel.

• Examine the problems and possibilities inherent to Kesey’s choice of Chief “Broom” Bromden as a narrator. You might discuss issues related to a) his perspective and subjectivity, b) his position in the societies of the ward and of the world at large, c) his personal history and mannerisms, and d) his narrative style.

Some sections/aspects of Part I that might make for interesting topics:

• Chief Bromden's periodic flashes of memory
• McMurphy's influence on the patients of the Ward; his laugh, his gambling, his debate with Harding, his singing
  
• McMurphy's initial interactions with Ratched; his behavior in Group Therapy
• The routine of the ward, Bromden's memories (of the cotton mill, etc.), the workings of the Ward as an arm of the Combine; Max Taber's backstory
• The black orderlies; Dr. Spivey's position; Ratched's recruitment process, the social structure of the Ward; mechanisms of Ratched's control
• Pete Bancini's story; animal imagery in McMurphy's conversation with Harding and the group (themes of emasculation, the effects of propaganda and the influence of the Combine's tactics of control
• Manipulation of time in the ward; the fog (What is it?)
• Bromden's dream
• McMurphy's tactics against Nurse Ratched, his attempts to change Ward policy, his recruitment of the men as resisters.; his morning shower, his meeting with Spivey, the carnival, the game room, his suggestions about music in the Ward, his desire to watch the World Series