The Role of Men and Women in Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest Essay

Words: 1160
Pages: 5
Open Document
In a perfect world, men and women would live as equals, sharing power in all aspects of life. While this may be an appealing notion, it is nonexistent in society. Strong men are seen by women as abusive and dominating, while strong women are seen by men as castrating and emasculating. The text of Ken Kesey’s novel, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, in many ways, conforms to the structure of conventional male myth and asks the reader to accept that myth as a heroic pattern. From a masculinist perspective, it offers a charismatic hero in Randle Patrick McMurphy, a figure of spiritual strength and sexual energy, whose laughter restores the patients of the mental institution to life and confounds the combine’s “machines,” or authoritarians. …show more content…
The “east/west” polarity represents the opposite philosophies and social-politics at the base of their conflict; a dichotomy which represents their respective ideas. Because Nurse Ratched is portrayed as “putting ‘em inna pens,” she is seen as the oppressor, opposite to the male “hens” who are seen as innocent and helpless. Similarly, John Zubizarreta examines the extent of the rift between the patients and the nurse in his article, “The Disparity of Point of View in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” He depicts the audience as “steadily siding with the psychopathic misfit McMurphy as he provokes the inflexible, prudish Miss Ratched into a battle that takes on the proportions of myth: man versus woman, good versus evil, freedom versus confinement, individuality versus conformity” (Zubizaretta 69). These traits all exist in opposite sides of the argument – McMurphy and the patients, individualists yearning for freedom, and Nurse Ratched, the evil tyrant confining them. The idea of heroism displayed in McMurphy creates a tone of misogyny, which causes the schism between the male and female persona.

Because the masculine approach of the text creates a dichotomy between the males and females of the ward, it rejects female authority. Throughout the novel, McMurphy pushes the boundaries Nurse Ratched has so painstakingly established. McMurphy serves as
Show More

Related Documents: The Role of Men and Women in Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest Essay

Authority In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

In Ken Kesey's (1) acclaimed novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the author explicates the hospital ward as a mechanized distension of the Combine, an intransigent system that represents authority and dominance. The main protagonist, Chief Bromden (2) scrutinizes the Combine as becoming a part of his own history as a Native American, where his families land was taken from him with the intention of establishing a dam. This notion of jurisdiction and (3) subjugation depicts that everyone had to…

Words 1380 - Pages 6

One Flew over the Cukoo's Nest Research Paper

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a modern fable pitting a marvelous type of good against a marvelous type of evil. Ken Kesey’s timeless novel depicts how society deals with the mentally ill in various ways, while showing how a 1950’s insane asylum treats its patients because of its dependence on cultural attitudes and sense of social responsibility. Kesey’s own experience adds credibility to his charges that called public attention to the conditions of our nation’s…

Words 2846 - Pages 12

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Feminist Analysis

movement by women who called themselves Feminists, aimed for American women to have the same opportunities as American men. This movement was sparked because American women begin to realize that there was so much more to life than getting married, becoming a mother, and tending to the every need of the husband. American women had no choice in pursuing a career because having a career was a man’s duty. The same cannot be said for the men in Ken Kesey’s novel who are overpowered by the women. In One Flew…

Words 823 - Pages 4

Compare the Ways Plath and Kesey Present Psychological Disorders and ‘Minds Under Stress’ in the Bell Jar and One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest? Essay

‘One flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ and ‘The Bell Jar’ can be linked considerably. Both the novels in question are products of the author’s own experiences and the specific culture in which they were written. They both draw upon similar events throughout, yet the philosophy and reason behind them is often significantly contrasting. However, it cannot be argued that their presentation of psychological disorder and the pressure that it forces on the mind are intrinsically linked due to the circumstances…

Words 3257 - Pages 14

Cuckoo's Nest

In the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, the author describes an all-male mental ward in the 1960s, that has been under the longtime dictatorship of a controlling nurse. Throughout the book, Kesey paints a misogynistic image of women through extensive description in which women are in a constant power struggle with masculinity. As a member of the counterculture movement in the 1960s, one could expect that in his novels Kesey would write about items like sexuality, hallucinogenic…

Words 1006 - Pages 5