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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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Throughout the book, Brett reveals himself as a tough, hero willing to do anything such as defending and protecting patrols overnight. Not until later in the book, Jack (member of Brett 's squad) was injured and taken to Dr. Morgan 's clinic. He reported that Jack had been severely injured and could not do anything about him because of the mass amount of internal bleeding. At that point, Jack explained that it was Brett and his squad who set the people in the tent on fire. Herb and the committee waited for Brett to arrive and he confessed it.

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Nurse Ratched Quotes

416 Words | 2 Pages

Heartless, cruel, and sadistic are all words people may use to characterize Nurse Ratched. She keeps dictatorial control over her patients, shatters patients' self worth, and is the symbol of evil and oppression in the novel. She treats patients with this authority so that they let her control them, and Kesey through the use of Ratched shows why it’s crucial to stand up and rebel against oppressive authority. Ratched would ruthlessly undermine her patients self worth to a degree where they would become compliant and submissive to her control. The best example of this is how she treats Billy Bibbit, a young, insecure, and vulnerable patient.

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Nurse Ratched In Ken Kesey's One Flew Over The Cuckoo

447 Words | 2 Pages

Nurse Ratched’s desire for control, in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, allows her to manipulate the entire hospital ward into believing her work is for the betterment of the patients. Significantly, Nurse Ratched appears doll-like: hair in a tight bun, a neatly pressed uniform, and “too-red” lipstick (48). Traditionally, dolls, like other toys, are made to occupy the unruly minds of young children. By comparing Nurse Ratched to a child’s toy, Kesey implies she is a mere distraction to the patients from their mental impairments.

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Gender Inequality In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

999 Words | 4 Pages

In Ken Kesey’s comic novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, gender is a definer of one's power in the hospital, and this leads to Nurse Ratched hiding her femininity, the patients’ attempts to boost their own masculinity, and both sides trying to expose the other. Kesey uses these examples to explain that men cannot handle a female leader. Nurse Ratched, a female who is head of the ward, attempts to hide her femininity so the men respect her power. At the beginning of the novel, Bromden is describing the Nurse’s appearance. He states, “A mistake was made somehow in manufacturing, putting those big, womanly breasts on what would of otherwise been a perfect work, and you can see how bitter she is about it” (6).

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Quotes From 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's'

426 Words | 2 Pages

One quote that made me feel is the quote, “The real impact is measured in the widows left behind, the children who will never know fathers or mothers, the names of the fallen etched changed” (Bay Area News Group). This quote makes me feel upset that the children don’t even know their family and get left behind. One quote that makes me think is the quote “‘ Over time, the pain gets a little better, than a moment will strike you when it’s as strange as it ever was… and it’s as if you just heard it,’” (Chapman).

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Literary Analysis of 'One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest'

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Moral Lense Literary Analysis of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest The 1950s, the context of which One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a novel by Ken Kesey, was written, was called the Era of Conformity. During this time, the American social atmosphere was quiet conformed, in that everyone was expected to follow the same, fixed format of behavior in society, and the ones who stand out of being not the same would likely be “beaten down” by the social norms. In the novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Kesey argues that it is immoral for society to simply push its beliefs onto the people who are deemed different, as it is unfair and could lead to destructive results. First of all, it is unjust for people who are deemed unalike from others in society to be forced into the preset way of conduct because human tend to have dissimilar nature.

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One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Leadership Analysis

778 Words | 4 Pages

Throughout Ken Kesey’s, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the balance of power is challenged in the psychiatric ward. Out of the several leaders that appear in the novel, Nurse Ratched and McMurphy are the most prominent. During Nurse Ratched and McMurphy struggle for power, they share many of the same qualities. It is argued that: “McMurphy and Ratched are alike in intelligence, military service, distinctive (if opposite) clothing, and conventionally masculine qualities” (Evans). These small similarities; however, do not distract the characters from fighting for their individual beliefs.

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One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Guilt Quotes

2009 Words | 9 Pages

Luke feels guilt after witnessing a crime that results in the death of one of the Siscos. Feeling of guilt affects the protagonist despite the fact that he did not do anything immoral: “Suddenly, I felt the urge to sneak back into the sanctuary and start praying. I knew I was guilty of something” (Grisham 40). Even though he does not know why he feels guilty, Luke still feels anxious, despite not being the one who participated in the fight. The fight affects Luke and he is probably more affected by it than many of the other spectators, and the fact that Luke knows Hank and that he works for the Chandlers also contributes to Luke’s condition and mental state.

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One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Important Quotes

890 Words | 4 Pages

. Five Quotations “I can’t stand it to think my life is going so fast and I’m not really living it. Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bull-fighters.” (Hemingway 18) “You see, Mr. Barnes, it is because I have lived very much that I now can enjoy everything so well” (Hemingway 67). “In the Basque country the land all looks very rich and green and the houses and villages look well-off clean...every way you looked there were other [gorgeous] mountains” (Hemingway 97-99).

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One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Essay

401 Words | 2 Pages

Lady Macbeth’s assertion of power over her husband in the form of humiliation while simultaneously employing her femininity allows her to use her sexual characteristics specifically her breasts to obtain advanced standing in her overall pursuit of power. On the contrary Nurse Ratched also known as Big Nurse is asexually domineering demanding the patients in the ward “Calm down, as the best thing we can do is go on with our daily routine”(1975 One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) and instills fear as “He’s maybe got more to say, but at this point Big Nurse usually hushes him. ”(Kesey 44). While her assertion of humiliation is similar to Lady Macbeth, her rise to power is solely derived from her utilization of fear and abandonment of femininity. By portraying herself in a hypermasculine manner, Nurse Ratched avoids exposing her “breasts” that reveal her femininity and order remains within the mental ward resulting in chaos that affects the hierarchy of

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Women In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

994 Words | 4 Pages

Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, published in 1962, tells the story of men in a psychiatric ward and focuses on two characters called McMurphy and Bromden, and their defiance towards the institution’s system. A critical factor in this novel are the women. The 1960’s played a significant role in changing the norms of social issues, and the perfect idea of women was changing too. Women were no longer just stay at home wives, but had their own voice in society, and many people did not agree with these untraditional views. Kesey’s representation of women in this novel illustrate them in a poor light that makes it obvious that they don’t fit the ideal womanly persona.

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One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Character Analysis

993 Words | 4 Pages

Kesey has used characterisation to get the idea that in this novel there are aspects of venerability and strength. In Nurse Ratched’s case, Kesey has made it so that she is shown with strength and power over the whole ward, including the black men in white, other nurses, and mainly the patients. An example of Nurse Ratched’s power over the patients is when she says to Billy Bibbit, “What worries me, Billy, ' she said- I could hear the change in her voice- 'is how your mother is going to take this.” This shows how one sentence was able to debilitate Billy into begging Nurse for forgiveness and restraint of telling his mother.

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Sexism In One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest

775 Words | 4 Pages

In Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, Kesey promotes sexist views through the way he characterizes his female characters. He does this showing women in a dehumanizing light. The nurse for example is constantly showing her source of power over the males on the ward by simply taking away theirs. However kesey also adds in women such as Candy to simply help empower men. Kesey wrote his novel in the 1960s.

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Analysis Of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest By Ken Kesey

1468 Words | 6 Pages

In Kesey’s novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, women are portrayed as the power figures

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Mental Illness In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

673 Words | 3 Pages

Ken Kesey uses his novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, to describe the lives of patients in a mental institution, and their struggle to overcome the oppressive authority under which they are living. Told from the point of view of a supposedly mute schizophrenic, the novel also shines a light on the many disorders present in the patients, as well as how their illnesses affect their lives during a time when little known about these disorders, and when patients living with these illnesses were seen as an extreme threat. Chief Bromden, the narrator of the novel, has many mental illnesses, but he learns to accept himself and embrace his differences. Through the heroism introduced through Randle McMurphy, Chief becomes confident in himself, and is ultimately able to escape from the toxic environment Nurse Ratched has created on the ward. Chief has many disorders including schizophrenia, paranoia, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder, and, in addition to these illnesses, he pretends to be deaf and dumb.

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