Sexuality and Humanity: Analyzing 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest'

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Madison Undercuffler Mr. Leskusky APLAC May 10, 2017 A Ratched Future One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey uses the conflicting characters of Randle McMurphy and Nurse Ratched to warn against a sexless society where men and women are stripped of their sexuality and their humanity. The novel was published in 1962, a time where the second wave of the feminist movemetn and the beginning of the seuxal revolution would make its foothold in society. Much like today, many traits that were associated with femininity were considered weak, undesirable in both men and women. While the disgust of feminine features is clear in the women of the story, specifically Nurse Ratched as she would “ignore the way nature had tagged her with those outsized …show more content…

This statement while true can be harmful to those reading it. Caroline Leach mentions this in her journal how in attempts to criticize emasculation in our culture he replaces an actual mental disability with it. This implies that a man who is not masculine enough to meet societies standards has something wrong with them mentally. This reduces real problems that people have like depression and anxiety to the same level as the problems of a lack of masculinity, which can be solved very quickly. While the message overall is positive it still enforces toxic stereotypes about masculinity to the reader. Works Cited Kesey, Ken. One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. NY, NY: Penguin , 2016. Print. Leach, Caroline, and Stuart Murray. "Disability and Gender in Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Disability Studies Quarterly 28.4 (2008): n. pag. Disability Studies Quarterly. Web. 13 May 2017. http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/149/149 Viktus, Daniel J. "Madness and Misogyny in Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest." Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics Madness and Civilization 14 (1994): 64-90. Web. 12 May 2017. http://www4.ncsu.edu/~leila/documents/VitkusonKesey.pdf "One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest." SparkNotes. SparkNotes, n.d. Web. 20 May 2017.

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