The novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey was a very touching story of the unfortunate individuals who have mental illnesses that require them to stay at a mental institution. The thesis of the novel was the question of sanity of every character in the novel. At times, each character showed parts of the personality that were perfectly sane. At other times, each and every character would show a part of them that appeared to the reader as a little insane.
             The author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey, was the younger of two sons, was born in on September 17, 1935 in La Junta, Colorado and in 1946 moved with his family to Springfield, Oregon, where he spent several years on his family's farm (www.gradesaver). He developed a great appreciation for Christian fables and the Christian ethical system because he was raised in a very religious household with his family (www.gradesaver). After high school, Kesey eloped with Faye Haxby, his high school sweetheart, and they later had three children together: Jed, Zane and Shannon (www.gradesaver). During high school and at college Kesey became a champion boxer (www.charm.net). Ken Kesey attended the University of Oregon with a degree in Speech and Communications. He also received a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship to enroll in the Creative Writing program at Stanford University (www.gradesaver).
             The fist novel Ken Kesey published was a project of his at Sanford University that he titled One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which he wrote and published in 1962. He discovered the main character for the book, Chief Bromden, of Chief Broom, because of experimental mind altering drugs that we was paid to test and report the results at Veterans Administration Hospital. Some of these drugs caused him to hallucinate of an Indian, which he named and made the main character of his novel (www.kirjasto). The second book he published was Sometimes a Great Notion...