Point of View in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Kesey The choice a novelist makes in deciding the point of view of a novel is certainly no minor one. Few authors decide to use first-person narration by a secondary character as Ken Kesey does in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. By choosing Bromden as narrator over Randle's central character Patrick McMurphy, Kesey gives us an objective narrative, that is, from outside the central character, and also a subjective and understandably unreliable narrative. The paranoia and dementia that fill Bromden's narrative set the tone for the struggle for liberation that is the theme of the story. It is also this choice of the narrator that leads the reader to wonder, at the conclusion, whether the story was actually that of McMurphy or Bromden. Kesey's choice of narrative technique makes One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest a successful novel. It would be difficult to ignore biographical information when analyzing a work by Ken Kesey, both for his involvement with Beat writers and as an advocate of hallucinogenic drugs. In fact, it is said that Kesey created the narrator of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest during a peyote hallucination when an Indian came to him (Tanner 21). If the choice of the Indian, a presumed deaf mute, as narrator seems out of the norm, it is even more so if we compare Kesey with the other Beat writers. McMurphy may be closely compared to Dean Moriarty from Jack Kerouac's On The Road, but Bromden is nothing like Kerouac's narrator, Sal Paradise. Certainly the loud and boisterous McMurphy would have been an interesting narrator for this novel, but this would have provided a very different ending. Also the... middle of paper...oo's Nest. Ed. George J. Searles. Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1992. 5-11.Hunt, John W. “Flying the Cuckoo's Nest: Kesey's Narrator as Norm.” Lex et Scientia 13 (1977): 27-32. Rpt. in A Casebook on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey. Ed. George J. Searles. Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1992. 13-23.Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. New York: Signet, 1962. Martin, Terence. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and the High Cost of Living.” Modern narrative studies. 19 (1973): 43-55. Rpt. in A Casebook on One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey. Ed. George J. Searles. Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1992. 25-39. Semino, Elena and Kate Swindlehurst. “Metaphor and Mental Style in Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.” Style 30 (1996): 143-67. Tanner, Stephen L. Ken Kesey. Boston: Twayne, 1983.