What was the intended meaning of the term "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," from Ken Kesey's book?

Answer 1

From filmsite.org

The film's unauthorized screenplay (by Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman) was restructured and adapted from author Ken Kesey's 1962 popular, best-selling novel of the same name so that it would appeal to contemporary audiences. [Kesey wrote the first version of the film's screenplay.] The film's title was derived from a familiar, tongue-twisting Mother's Goose children's folk song (or nursery rhyme) called Vintery, Mintery, Cutery, Corn. The ones that fly east and west are diametrically opposed to each other and represent the two combatants in the film. The one that flies over the cuckoo's nest [the mental hospital filled with "cuckoo" patients] is the giant, 'deaf-mute' Chief:

Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn,
Apple seed and apple thorn;
Wire, briar, limber lock,
Three geese in a flock.
One flew east,
And one flew west,
And one flew over the cuckoo's nest.

Answer 2

nicely i'm no genius or something, yet as cuckoo is a slang observe for mad, cuckoos nest is a psychological homestead, one flying over it would advise the single that have been given remote from the homestead, that should talk with a number of of the characters.

Answer 3

Kesey was trying to show that society decides who is crazy & who is not. Once society, in the form of Nurse Ratchett, has made that decision it will do anything it can to keep control of these people. McMurphy lives outside of society's rules and therefore must be crazy.

Answer 4

the title is from a nursery rhyme... also sanitarium-cuckoo's nest is pretty on the nose