One Flew Over A Cuckoos Nest was written by Ken Kesey and published in the United States in 1962. (First Signet Printing, February 1962). Ken Kesey was born in Oregon on September 17th, 1935 in La Junta, Colorado. He was raised in a religious home and grew up believing strongly in Christian ethical thoughts and beliefs. He had three children with his high school sweetheart and attended University of Oregon with a degree in speech communications. Kesey became the proponent of a local band known as the "Warlocks," which later became the Grateful Dead. Kesey and his Merry Pranksters became notorious for their "Acid Tests" and use of LSD and other drugs. When the government made LSD illegal, Kesey fled to Mexico. When he returned to the United States for a final performance, he was arrested on a marijuana charge. Kesey died on November 10, 2001 after cancer surgery on his liver.
             The novel is set in a mental institution in Oregon. Most of the book takes place in the mental institution with the exception of of scene when the main character takes the mental patients on a fishing trip. This scene is set on the boat. There is no given time that this book is set in.
             Randle P. McMurphy is the main character in the book. He is Irish and has a gambling habit. He is a conman and is not insane but using it as an excuse to get out of work on the Pendleton Prison Farm. He becomes the leader of the mental patients and causes the main nurse so much trouble that she lobotomizes him. He is killed by an Indian in the institution in the end. Chief Bromden is the narrator of the novel. He is a Colombian Indian, with a White mother and an Indian father. Her was in the ward for fifteen years. He is six feet seven inches but thinks that he is small. He pretends that he is deaf mute and nobody but McMurphy knows that he is not. He escapes from the hospital in the final scene in the novel. Nurse Ratched is the main nurse who is...