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Gender Roles In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

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One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Gender Studies In the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey is taken place in 1962. The book is about a mental ward hospital with different types of patients and it is divided into acutes, chronics, and vegetable. Nurse Ratched controls the ward. The narrator is Chief Bromden who is a huge, manly half-native who is presented as a deaf patient. Applying Gender Studies to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, exposes how men on the ward are either immaculated or act as sexual predators. The men on the ward are controlled and immaculated by the Big Nurse’s use of intimidation. It makes the men feel weak and frightened of her. In the novel, Nurse Ratched makes sure everybody follows her rules, “She accumulates her ideal staff: doctors, all ages and types, come and rise up in front of her with ideas of their own about the way a ward should be run, some with backbone enough to stand behind their ideas, and she fixes these doctors with dry-ice eyes day in, day out until they retreat with unnatural chills.” (29) She controls the hospital by manipulating the patients in order to fulfill her desires. Nurse Ratched succeeds at getting the patients and everyone else in the ward to do what she wants. …show more content…

He shows the other men to have more courage and to become fearless. Mcmurphy brings the men together while the nurse wants the men to destroy each other and have conflicts. He forms a basketball team for the men to play, show cooperation and teamwork. Mcmurphy shows competition with big nurse by gaining more power and authority over her. He plans a fishing trip for the men to experience the society, “You promise me that, and not only get my special body buildin’ course for nothing but you get yourself a ten buck fishin trip, free!” (223) Mcmurphy gambles, he makes a deal with Bromden to lift the control panel since Mcmurphy knows he is a strong

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When Nurse Ratched does not grant McMurphy access to the TV to watch the world series, McMurphy proposes a vote to settle the dispute. The nurse agrees to this and Chief describes the moment, “First one, then another, then the next. Right on down the line of Acutes, dragging them out of the fog till there they stand, all twenty of them, raising not just for watching TV, but against the Big Nurse, against her trying to send McMurphy to Disturbed, against the way she’s talked and acted and beat them down for years'' (109). McMurphy has inspired the patients to stand up for themselves against the Big Nurse, despite their fear of consequences. This is the first time that anyone has stood up against the big Nurse, and therefore she is shocked and dismayed.

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McMurphy initially sees Nurse Ratched as an obstacle to his freedom and the freedom of the other patients. However, he quickly realizes that he can use her to his advantage. He begins to flirt with her and tries to seduce her, hoping to undermine her authority and gain power over the other patients. He also tries to provoke her into making mistakes, which he can then use to his advantage. For example, he encourages the other patients to rebel against her, knowing that she will respond with harsh punishments.

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