The 1960’s was the beginning of change for all men and women, during that time the women were viewed as homeworkers and mothers. During this decade the role of women changed as they gradually gained their freedom. As for men, their job was to protect and provide for their families. In the novel One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, gender roles are compared to the roles of a patriarchal society. Women take over patients and the men become “victims of matriarchy.” The women are intended on dominating the men. The characters in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, are being portrayed through masculinity and feminism by the use of unbalanced gender roles.
The book was published in 1962, and during that time, there were a lot of gender roles. It was a
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time where females were looked upon on. According to a U.S News article contributed by Kenneth T. Waltch March 12, 2010 “…deep cultural changes were altering the role of women in American society. More females than ever were entering the paid workforce, and this increased the dissatisfaction among women." Women during that time were belittled while the men dominated them but in this novel, Kesey reverse their roles in where the women dominate the men. In the novel, powerful women are shown with the character known as Nurse Ratched because they do not stick to traditional female roles. In the novel, Nurse Ratched and McMurphy are constantly as a battle, using sexual connotations.
Nurse Ratched first started with Bibbits experience with his mother and progressed by Harding's relationships being brought up at the group meetings and forcing them to reveal their secrets. Nurse Ratched uses sex to make the men feel inferior and inadequate. This also occurred when Bibbit decided to commit suicide in defiance of Nurse Ratched authority. Nurse Ratched falls into a sexually powerful woman who dismisses traditional notions of femininity by running the ward. Throughout the novel she is described using images as machines like in the quote “She blows up bigger and bigger, big as a tractor, so big I can smell the machinery inside the way you smell a motor pulling too big a load” (Kesey 5), to further disconnect her from the traditional feminine role that ultimately firm unbalanced gender roles. The women there is determined and powerful weather in society the men would be considered powerful. Nurse Ratched and McMurphy sexual domination end up turning sex into a weapon between them, violence itself because of an act of sex.
Throughout the novel, Ken Kesey builds up the tension and hate between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched to set up the book's strong meaning that powerful women need be dominated by the men. McMurphy constantly challenges Nurse Ratched, correcting her when she calls him by the wrong name, "Mr. McMurry" (Kesey 25) and by disobeying her commands. McMurphy
ends up realizing that with Nurse Ratched torture towards the men she creates a low self-esteem so he tries building it up telling them sexual jokes and teaching them how to rebel against Nurse Ratched learning how to no longer fear her. The women in the novel act like "machines" often even referred to as "ticking bombs" that want to take over the ward. When he describes her physical appearance, he does it in machines like her gestures are “precise and automatic” and “Her face is smooth, calculated, and precision made". (Kesey 5) He also comments on her large breasts and regards them as a “mistake made in manufacturing,” which she presents because they are marks of femininity that all women present. The women want to have complete power and control over the men this is why the men are emasculated. The female and male relationship that Kesey demonstrates in his novel shows the sexist views of traditional gender roles and how they are unbalanced. Kesey succeeds in creating characters that do not display your "normal" gender roles, the male characters are weak and wispy, while the females are sexless machines, "Tell me, Mr. McMurphy, how does one go about showing a woman who's boss, I mean other than laughing at her" (Kesey 70) The men believe a women, shouldn't be telling them what to do, that it should be the other way around. The novel One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, shows how it is characterized as a sexual society where the roles are switched and unbalanced and not your typical gender roles. The novel was written to show the difference between gender roles and what would occur if the roles were reversed or even unbalanced. Kesey's work shows a great deal of sexism, masculinity, and femininity that could be related to society today. One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, is a novel portrayed through masculinity and feminism by the use of unbalanced gender roles.
In One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, role reversal puts a woman, Nurse Ratched, in control of the ward, which is important in creating a contrast to traditional power. Within the ward Ratched has ultimate power by “merely [insinuating]” (p. 63) a wrongdoing and has control of the doctors. Soon after the first confrontation with Randle McMurphy (Mack), her power is demonstrated through the submissive and obedient manners of all there (152). Ratched is shown as having great power within the ward and outside, despite that time periods constriction of being a women, showing an important contrast to traditional power structures.
Nurse Ratched was head nurse of the ward. She needed to have control over everything. All of the patients feared Nurse Ratched, or as they sometimes call her, “Big Nurse.” That is everyone feared her until McMurphy. Because he refused to listen to Nurse Ratched, the “ruler” of the ward, it showed that there will be dismay between the two throughout the story.
In Ken Kesey’s novel, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, he engages the reader with Nurse Ratched’s obsession with power, especially against McMurphy. When Nurse Ratched faces multiple altercations with McMurphy, she believes that her significant power is in jeopardy. This commences a battle for power in the ward between these characters. One assumes that the Nurses’ meticulous tendency in the ward is for the benefit of the patients. However, this is simply not the case. The manipulative nurse is unfamiliar with losing control of the ward. Moreover, she is rabid when it comes to sharing her power with anyone, especially McMurphy. Nurse Ratched is overly ambitious when it comes to being in charge, leaving the reader with a poor impression of
Nurse Ratched is portrayed as the authority figure in the hospital. The patients see no choice but to follow her regulations that she had laid down for them. Nurse Ratched's appearance is strong and cold. She has womanly features, but hides them “Her Face is smooth, calculated, and precision-made, like an expensive… A mistake was made somehow in manufacturing putting those big, womanly breasts on what would have otherwise been a prefect work, and you can see how bitter she is about it.” (11) She kept control over the ward without weakness, until McMurphy came. When McMurphy is introduced into the novel he is laughing a lot, and talking with the patients in the ward, he does not seem intimidated by Miss Ratched. McMurphy constantly challenges the control of Nurse Ratched, while she tries to show she remains in control, He succeeds in some ways and lo...
People often find themselves as part of a collective, following society's norms and may find oneself in places where feeling constrained by the rules and will act out to be unconstrained, as a result people are branded as nuisances or troublemakers. In the novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, the author Ken Kesey conveys the attempt McMurphy makes to live unconstrained by the authority of Nurse Ratched. The story is very one sided and helps create an understanding for those troublemakers who are look down on in hopes of shifting ingrained ideals. The Significance of McMurphy's struggles lies in the importance placed on individuality and liberty. If McMurphy had not opposed fear and autocratic authority of Nurse Ratched nothing would have gotten better on the ward the men would still feel fear. and unnerved by a possibility of freedom. “...Then, just as she's rolling along at her biggest and meanest, McMurphy steps out of the latrine ... holding that towel around his hips-stops her dead! ” In the novel McMurphy shows little signs like this to combat thee Nurse. His defiance of her system included
She determines when they take their medication and even tells them when they are able to bathe. Nurse Ratched takes control by taking away a man’s masculinity and making them feel small when they are there. She tells the patients that they aren’t real men and she treats them like they are children. The article “Fixing Men: Castration, Impotence, and Masculinity is Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” by Michael Meloy states, “Nurse Ratched—a sterile, distant, and oppressive feminine force who psychologically castrates the male patients” (3). Nurse Ratched is able to dominate every man in the ward because they are all afraid she will shame them and break them down in front of the other men on the ward and take away their character. Meloy proves this by explaining, “That to castrate a male is to take away the very essence of his being, or his ‘spirit’” (4). The men on the ward are afraid of what she might do or say to them if they go against
This also demonstrates how much power McMurphy has gained so far over Ms. Ratched. In the novel, Ms. Ratched tries to take away all of the power that McMurphy has gained over her by blaming McMurphy for making the lives of the hospital patients worse, and that McMurphy was the cause for the deaths of patients William Bibbit and Charles Cheswick. This angers McMurphy, and causes him to choke her with the intent to kill her, in the novel, Chief Bromden describes, “Only at the last---after he’d smashed through that glass door, her face swung around, with terror forever ruining any other look she might ever try to use again, screaming when he grabbed her and ripped her uniform all the way down the front.
In Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the reader has the experience to understand what it was like to live in an insane asylum during the 1960’s. Kesey shows the reader the world within the asylum of Portland Oregon and all the relationships and social standings that happen within it. The three major characters’ groups, Nurse Ratched, the Black Boys, and McMurphy show how their level of power effects how they are treated in the asylum. Nurse Ratched is the head of the ward and controls everything that goes on in it, as she has the highest authority in the ward and sabotages the patients with her daily rules and rituals. These rituals include her servants, the Black Boys, doing anything she tells them to do with the patients.
The female characters in Young Frankenstein and One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest are, stereotypically, satiric and parodic renditions of oppressed or emotionally unstable feminine personalities. The theme of the treatment of women is not only played out in the external relationships the women interact within but also in the basic mentality and roles they embody within their personality. The women of Young Frankenstein add a comical element to the film which a direct contrast to the insignificance of the female in Mary Shelley’s novel. The women of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest are either almost terrifying when thinking of the potential evil lurking just beneath the surface or effectual props in the healing of those who need it.
Throughout the novel he is very loud and is known for his unwavering ability to speak his mind and confront those that oppose him. Nurse Ratched uses her voice throughout the novel to intimidate the patients. She is the antagonist of the novel. The patients obsequiously follow Ratched’s command, until McMurphy comes along. They all fear that she will send them to shock therapy if they don’t obey her.
The story of Cuckoo’s Nest took place in the 50’s-60’s, an era where men were considered the dominant gender of their society. The characters almost certainly knew this also, but one character who knew this for sure was Nurse Ratched. Ratched may seem like a grouchy, evil lady--which she is-- but she is also the symbol for emasculation. In the story, instances are shown of her hiding her feminine qualities such as “And in spite of all her attempts to conceal them, in that sexless get-up, you can still make out the evidence of some rather extraordinary breasts”(55). By the author using the untraditional role of a woman as the main antagonist, readers have a tendancy to be more drawn to what makes her so powerful and scary. And the part that makes Nurse scary is the fact that she does not want to be seen as a woman! She understands the political underlyings of her era and if she wants to maintain a position of strength, then all ties to her gender must be cut loose. The odd choice of a female character creates more interest for the readers to pay attention to the story. The idea of emasculation, getting the power of male sexuality taken away, is also very present in the story. The symbol of this idea is shown with Rawler and his suicide. Rawlers death was described as “ Old Rawler. Cut both nuts off and bled to death, sitting right on the can in the latrine, half a dozen people in there with him
Kappel, Lawrence. Readings on One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2000. Print.
There were no heroes on the psychiatric ward until McMurphy's arrival. McMurphy gave the patients courage to stand against a truncated concept of masculinity, such as Nurse Ratched. For example, Harding states, "No ones ever dared to come out and say it before, but there is not a man among us that does not think it. That doesn't feel just as you do about her, and the whole business feels it somewhere down deep in his sacred little soul." McMurphy did not only understand his friends/patients, but understood the enemy who portrayed evil, spite, and hatred. McMurphy is the only one who can stand against the Big Nurse's oppressive supreme power. Chief explains this by stating, "To beat her you don't have to whip her two out of three or three out of five, but every time you meet. As soon as you let down your guard, as sson as you loose once, she's won for good. And eventually we all got to lose. Nobody can help that." McMuprhy's struggle for hte patient's free will is a disruption to Nurse Ratched's social order. Though she holds down her guard she yet is incapable of controlling what McMurphy is incontrollable of , such as his friends well being, to the order of Nurse Ratched and the Combine.
In this novel Kesey has used narrative structure, foreshadowing and symbolism to create the tragic form and to show he downfall of McMurphy throughout the novel. As the down fall of McMurphy progresses throughout the novel his ideas got stronger and at the end of the novel his death reinforced his ideas even more, defeating the Big Nurse due to patients signing out form the ward for freedom. Her control over the ward was shattered when the Chief used the control panel to escape from the ward. The electroshock therapy table was one of the major reason of McMurphy not able to escape the ward.
“Girls wear jeans and cut their hair short and wear shirts and boots because it is okay to be a boy; for a girl it is like promotion. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, according to you, because secretly you believe that being a girl is degrading” (McEwan 55-56). Throughout the history of literature women have been viewed as inferior to men, but as time has progressed the idealistic views of how women perceive themselves has changed. In earlier literature women took the role of being the “housewife” or the household caretaker for the family while the men provided for the family. Women were hardly mentioned in the workforce and always held a spot under their husband’s wing. Women were viewed as a calm and caring character in many stories, poems, and novels in the early time period of literature. During the early time period of literature, women who opposed the common role were often times put to shame or viewed as rebels. As literature progresses through the decades and centuries, very little, but noticeable change begins to appear in perspective to the common role of women. Women were more often seen as a main character in a story setting as the literary period advanced. Around the nineteenth century women were beginning to break away from the social norms of society. Society had created a subservient role for women, which did not allow women to stand up for what they believe in. As the role of women in literature evolves, so does their views on the workforce environment and their own independence. Throughout the history of the world, British, and American literature, women have evolved to become more independent, self-reliant, and have learned to emphasize their self-worth.