Context 1950´s America.
The automobile revolution happened, in which the
number of cars doubled from 39 million to 74 million. By 1950 49% of the
Americans where church members but until 1960 it went up to 69%.
In the 1950s, it is the time period in which the book was written and set. By his time it was the end of the Cold war, so all the time in which people where strained with freedom of speech ended.
The United States had
just been through the cold war with the Soviet Union. Americans feared that
there was a possibility of a nuclear conflict.
Young people in
particular began questioning the values and beliefs of those persons in power. Here
is where the Beat Generation started; it was a group who expressed their disapproval
with society through art, dress, and actions. Poetry was a common way in which
the beatniks used to communicate their ideas. An example is Allen Ginsberg's
1955 poem "Howl" which
expressed what many
people saw as the moral and social problems of the time.
Groups such as the Beat Generation became part of a
larger movement known as the counterculture. What began as a band of political campaigns
eventually gave rise in the 1960s to the hippies, a group dedicated to peace,
love, and the quest to expand one's inner horizons through the use of
mind-altering drugs. Kesey's experiences associated the two groups, because he fromed
part of a scientific experiment on the effects of LSD (lysergic acid
diethylamide-25), which is one of the most potent mind-altering chemicals known.
Since 1966, Kesey himself has rejected the use of drugs, saying that “the costs
far exceed the benefits”.
Mental illness in the United States was misinterpreted;
since advances were not as in depth as they are now, the treatment consisted of
nothing more than chaining or caging the sufferer.
In the 1950s, there were many advances in pharmaceuticals.
This led to more methods of treatment for mental patients.
In 1956, more patients were being discharged from U.S.
mental institutions than admitted for the first time in over a century, many
aided by prescribed drugs to manage irrational behaviour.
In addition to
medication, the use of electroshock therapy and psychosurgery were common
treatments for psychiatric disorders.
A third mode of treatment is the destruction of
certain cells or fibres in the brain through surgical measures, a lobotomy.
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