One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Analysis

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was written in the early 1960’s, a time where racism and sexism was present in every aspect of life, and this novel is not any different. The wrongful treatment of minorities and women are blatant and are shown in the novel by several different ways. Because of this treatment the story has faced harsh judgment. I think that this story deserves it criticism for its treatment of race and gender because it implies racism several times, it has stereotypical sexist roles, and also has non-stereotypical roles.

The reader can see the racism within the book several different ways throughout the entirety of it, though it is limited to what it could be because the characters aren’t in the real world, merely set aside in the ward of the mental hospital. The African American patients in the book are often referred to as ‘black boys’; a fairly common racial slur is made by referring to someone by the color of their skin as a name and label. There are also times in the novel where it is implied, but not necessarily written out, that they as minorities are lesser to white people in general society, and the reader can see this by the way the author, Ken Kesey, writes.

There are no female doctors, only nurses, showing that while women can have professional jobs, they can never truly be in charge and must always be ranked underneath men. The prostitutes are shown as objects, and not as people, again conveying the image that women are ‘lesser’. All the women shown in this book are displayed negatively, or lesser than their male counterparts in one way or another. Nurse Ratched is even stereotyped as a mean old woman, and given the overly plump body type that falls along with that to match. The women's bodies are discussed crudely throughout the book, and they are referred to by using sexual terms