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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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
The mid-twentieth century was a time of change for many women and African-Americans. Typical housewife lives’ were no longer the only option for women due to greater job freedom allowing them to have a professional life. At the same time African-Americans were had greater freedom after civil rights movements paved the way to greater opportunities. During the same period, a movement of extremist feminist and African-Rights groups, like Black Power and radical feminist movements that were gaining power at that time, and were also highly controversial in their push for a women or African-American dominated society. One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest portrays through the reversal of traditional roles the corruption by power on all, and the need for equality in power.
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
Kesey also uses characterisation to show power. The ‘Big’ Nurse Ratched runs the ward in which the central characters reside in a manner that induces fear in both patients and staff. The Nurse controls almost everything in the men’s lives; their routines, food, entertainment, and for those who are committed, how long they stay in the hospital. Nurse Ratched is the main example of power and control in the novel. The Big Nurse has great self-control; she is not easily flustered and never lets others see what she is feeling. Rather than accusing the men of anything, she ‘insinuates’. Although she isn’t physically larger than the ‘small’ nurses, The Chief describes Nurse Ratched as ‘Big’ because of the power she holds – this presentation of size is used for many characters.
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
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.
Kappel, Lawrence. Readings on One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2000. Print.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
“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.