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Ken Elton Kesey Essay

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Ken Elton Kesey, author and guru of the hippie generation, was born on September 17, 1935, in La Junta, Colorado. However, Kesey was brought up in Springfield, Oregon, where his parents had a dairy farm and he was prominent in wrestling, as well as playing football. Kesey also developed an interest in theatre at the University of Oregon at this time, but a scholarship for his accomplishments in wrestling deterred him from pursuing an acting career.
After marrying Norma Faye Haxby, Kesey’s high school girlfriend, he considered a career as an actor once more, but instead he won a scholarship to the graduate program in writing at Stanford University (A&E Networks Television, 23 Mar. 2016) and enrolled there in 1958 (Public Broadcasting Service, n.d.). While attending Stanford in 1960, Kesey began volunteering as a paid experimental subject by the U.S. Army. During these experiments, he was given mind-altering drugs and told to report on the effects. Simultaneously, he worked as an attendant in a psychiatric ward and these …show more content…

This belief manifested into the novel Sometimes a Great Notion, and Kesey’s group, The Merry Pranksters. In 1964, they went on a cross-country trip in “Further”, an old bus covered in kaleidoscopic graffiti. The Merry Pranksters ended up in the World’s Fair in New York City and conducted “Acid Tests” where an attendee would drink “electric”, or acid-laced Kool-Aid and have to resist the urge to freak out. Sometimes these events would include guests such as the Warlocks, or The Grateful Dead. The Merry Pranksters were temporarily interrupted when Kesey was charged for possessing marijuana. To avoid being arrested, he faked a suicide note and fled to Mexico. The following year, Kesey returned to the United States and endured a six-month sentence on a work farm before resuming his fun with the Merry

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