Ken Kesey: Words and attitudes that spoke for a counterculture

The 60s were a time notorious for anti-war protests and legions of daytrippers roaming the land. The Haight-Ashbury scene in San Francisco, usually considered the epicenter of psychedelic movement, emerged from an amalgamation of the youthful intellectual atmosphere of nearby Berkeley and Stanford, the individualistic spirit that rang true throughout the west, and hallucinogenic drugs. At the very middle was the low-rent Stanford neighborhood of Perry Lane, where promising young writer Ken Kesey resided. Kesey's writings and actions came to represent this counterculture and spread his message spread through both his own novels, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962) and Sometimes A Great Notion (1964), while influencing others in Tom Wolfe's detailed account of the Merry Pranksters' hijinks, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968).

Told from the bizarre point-of-view of the schizophrenic ward resident Chief Bromden, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest chronicles the power struggle between the independent and brash gambler McMurphy and the strict Big Nurse. Sometimes A Great Notion, Kesey's "big novel," illustrated the conflict between logger Hank Stamper and his half-brother, Leland, caused by Hank's seduction at a young age by Leland's mother and Leland's severe vengefulness, as well as the family's constant run ins with the local logging union because they refused to join. Tom Wolfe immortalized the Pranksters with The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by portraying the 'Furthur' bus ride from California, through the south, and to New York, the Acid Tests, and Kesey's great escape from the law to Mexico in all their dramatic, Day-Glo glory.

Kesey grew up on a farm in Springfield, Oregon, married his high school sweetheart, Faye, earned a degree in Speech and Communications from the University of Oregon, and joined a famous Creative Writing program at Stanford. It was there that he made like-minded friends in Perry Lane, was introduced to psychedelics via "'psychotomimetric' drug experiments at the local VA hospital" (Rick), and worked in a mental institution. He was twice arrested on possession of marijuana, and to avoid prosecution, he fled to Mexico after a feigned suicide. His outspoken opinions are well known for promoting such ideas as the importance of self-reliance and really living life-"fooling around with reality" (Rick)-and an unabashed confrontational, in-your-face attitude toward all authority. He skillfully used his craft as a vehicle for getting this message across.

Kesey's own inner conflicts shone through the contention between Hank and Leland Stamper in Sometimes A Great Notion. Hank, raised in a household where the maxim was 'NEVER GIVE A INCH,' represented the rugged individualism engrained in Kesey's psyche, while Leland, educated in eastern schools, symbolized the intellectualism Kesey chose to embrace. According to Matthew Rick, these opposing ideas were also symbols of people in Kesey's life, namely, old wrestling friends from Oregon versus the artists and writers on Perry Lane. As the story moves on, it becomes obvious that Kesey wants Hank to give up, because the individual freedom he survives on "can become a cage" (Rick).

The most enduring theme in Kesey's work, however, is the evil of authority. While only a minor theme in Sometimes A Great Notion with Hank standing firm against the union, it is the major theme of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. McMurphy, an extreme character designed to represent individuality and freedom with his very forward mannerisms and take-action ideas, is pitted against the also-extreme Big Nurse, who rules the ward with an iron fist, as the embodiment of the all-powerful society and its directive of strict conformity. According to Adelman, "The gods are hospital authority concentrated in the Big Nurse who must destroy the self-respect and dignity of her patients to maintain her power." Bromden often observes McMurphy's confidence with such statements as, "He's not gonna let them twist him and manufacture him" (Kesey 140). McMurphy comes out ahead of Big Nurse in each of their skirmishes. Even in death, he is somehow glorified, at least in Bromden's eyes, to the point of martyrdom.

In Cuckoo's Nest, Kesey employs Bromden as narrator to illustrate this important aspect of his message. Through Bromden's distorted viewpoint, he could more freely show the opponents, McMurphy and Big Nurse, in their extremes (Rick), and adds "a complex dimension of irony" (Zubizaretta). "He could present a schizophrenic state the way the schizophrenic himself, Chief Broom, feels it and at the same time report the McMurphy Method more subtly," Wolfe wrote of this choice (44).

In both Kesey's work and in his own life, he sets up his protagonists-McMurphy, Hank Stamper, and the Merry Pranksters-as tragic heroes. The tyrannical society hates them for shaking things up, and they can't help but antagonize them into forced submission. In Cuckoo's Nest, "Big Nurse hates him [McMurphy] for weakening . . . Control, and the System. . . . Finally, Big Nurse is driven to play her trump card and finish off McMurphy by having him lobotomized" (Wolfe 44). In effect, McMurphy becomes a martyr. Hank Stamper in Great Notion refuses to 'GIVE A INCH.' Ironically, by standing his ground, Hank ultimately becomes trapped by his own freedom (Rick).

The Pranksters liked to think of themselves as "living cinema;" Gehr describes them as "archetype-dissolving goofballs representing a strange new tribe." Whatever drug-induced crazy ideas Kesey conjured up somehow became reality in the Pranksters' world. Stunts like a visit from the Hell's Angels earned the Pranksters some local media coverage. Law enforcement officials were baffled and unsuccessful in catching them in anything. In 1965, after obtaining a warrant, the police raided Kesey's home. "Kesey was later booked on a charge of resisting arrest, among other charges, to which he said that he had been in the bathroom and some unidentified male came up and embraced him from behind, so naturally he slugged him. It was a laugh and a half." The Pranksters saw how the cops were acting, and taunted them accordingly: "Hey! Play fair! Play fair! Be fair cops! Play hard but play fair" (Wolfe 135). However, charges were eventually brought anyway. Kesey had been "directly confronting the authorities with his audacity. The government was more determined than ever to put an end to [his] theatrics" (Rick), which lead to the climax of Kesey's "movie:" his escape to Mexico. He eluded the cops for about nine months there while living in a paranoid haze: "Haul ass, Kesey. Move. Scram. Split flee hide vanish disintegrate. Like run. . . . THEY HAVE JUST OPENED THE DOOR DOWN BELOW, ROTO ROOTER, SO YOU HAVE MAYBE 45 SECONDS ASSUMING THEY BE SLOW AND SNEAKY AND SURE ABOUT IT" (Wolfe 256). His return to the states involved much fanfare, false identities, "flamboyant public appearances," and the intention to "make one last heroic getaway" (Rick). The latter was never to occur, as Kesey was caught by the cops and sentenced to a total of nine months on a county work farm and given a $1,500 fine.

The Pranksters' big events, the Acid Tests, became an important part of the Haight-Ashbury drug culture. At the Acid Tests, a great concentration of "beautiful people" came to drop acid, which allowed them to see things they had never seen and feel things they had never felt. Kesey planned them with plenty of visual and audio effects to enhance the experience, and while there, "anything was OK," as Jerry Garcia explained (Rick). This was obviously in line with the ideas of free love and psychedelia that were so prevalent at the time.

So in love with the happy shiny feeling were the acidheads that they could not understand why Kesey told them to "go beyond acid" after returning from Mexico. He explained, "'You find out what you came to find when you're on acid, and we've got to start doing it without acid.' To those who hadn't heard this theory, though, it suddenly looked as though he was copping out" (Rick). "All those good-loving heads . . . they've been having quite a time for themselves . . . a summer of euphoria, the millennium, in fact, LSD and hundreds of beautiful people already spread out like a wave over the world and end all bullshit, drown it in love and awareness, and nothing could stop them" (Wolfe 337), not even their own heroic Kesey. How ironic that Kesey, one of the first to defy old authority, should at last defy the movement he started.

The 60s have become a legendary reminder of a big party that anyone could be a part of. Political events spawned a counterculture so fascinating and vivid that many are still in love with the idea of it. Ken Kesey was much more than a participant, he was a founder and a hero, helping start the psychedelic movement in San Francisco. His theatric struggles with authority are chronicled in Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and his ideas retained by the classics One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Sometimes A Great Notion. Through these, Kesey remains clearly ahead of his time, leading an assault on authority, guiding a movement to new vision, and ultimately moving ahead in defiance of his own movement.

Works Cited

• Adelman, George and Ken Kesey. "Ken Kesey." Library Journal 118.11 (1993): S8-11/13.
  
• Brown, Chip. "Ken Kesey Kisses No Ass." Esquire Sept. 1992: 158-167.
  
• Gehr, Richard. "Tricky Business." Village Voice 3 Feb. 1998: 134-138/9.
  
• Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. New York: Viking, 1962.
  
• ---. Sometimes A Great Notion. New York: Viking, 1963, 1964.
  
• Ott, Bill. "Quick Bibs: Books on a Timeless Topic." American Libraries Mar. 1993: 280-282/3.
  
• Rick, Matthew. "Tarnished Galahad: The Prose and Pranks of Ken
• Wolfe, Tom. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. New York: Bantam, 1969.
  
• Zubizarreta, John. "The Disparity of Point of View in 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.'" Literature Film Quarterly 22.1 (1994): 62-70.

(from Honors English 11)