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One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Quotes

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Gender stereotypes have been around for hundreds of years and still are today. The stereotypes for women are strict in regards to jobs and homelife, behavior, and even attire. They keep a firm hold on women 's daily life, so whenever women get the opportunity for power, they will take it. Ken Kesey’s novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo 's Nest, strongly features the stereotypes of women and, adversely, women in power; Kesey displays his opinion that women in power will abuse their status to manipulate men. One aspect of Kesey’s display of his distaste for influential women, is displayed through the character, Nurse Ratched (Big Nurse). The nurse used her calm composure to manipulate the men in the ward. In one part of the novel, Chief, the main character, observes that the nurse’s expression is “smiling, pitying, patient, and disgusting all at once---a trained expression” (Kesey, 176). This shows that Nurse Ratched is deceitful. She isn’t honest with her actions and she put on an act to trick people into trusting her. The quote illustrates Kesey’s hatred for women in power by showing the nurse’s character in such a negative light; it makes light of the fact that he, Kesey, doesn’t believe that a powerful woman would use her influence for good. Nurse Ratched puts up a front for another occasion in the book when Chief observes her talking …show more content…

He portrays them as evil and manipulative: having Nurse Ratched manipulate men by keeping a calm composure in order to make them trust her. In addition to that Vera Harding is painted as evil: insulting her husband with every chance she gets and being condescending towards his friends. Ken Kesey depicts strong women as rude, manipulative, and evil; and this, inadvertently, divulges his feelings towards them: distaste, hostility, and spitefulness. So given these points, gender stereotypes have long run through the veins of society and are still alive and well

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