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Sexism In One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest

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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. During the 1960s the feminist movement, also know as the women’s movement, was underway with reforms on issues like domestic violence sexual harassment and reproductive rights. for women. Ironically Kesey wrote his novel during this time and through his novel we are his views on sexism. Many instances in the novel Kesey has shown women only having power by stealing it from others. Nurse Ratched and the Chiefs mother in particular are portrayed as castrating women. To all of the men on the Ward, Nurse …show more content…

He thoroughly shows through these characters that Female physical traits equal weakness, while male traits equal power. He promotes his sexist views by showing the gender roles reversed to further enhance mans power. The women, Nurse Ratched for example, is looked at as destructive forces she is seen as a machine “a mistake was made somehow in manufacturing putting those big, womanly breasts on what would of otherwise been a perfect work”(6). “She’s swelling up, swells till her backs splitting out the white uniform”(5). At the end of the novel her breasts are exposed and her feminine (less powerful) side is seen. Her clothes “could no longer conceal the fact that she was a women”(320). She tries to hide her femininity throughout the whole novel, again because any sign or femininity shows weakness. Nurse Ratched controls all men on the ward and acts as what Kesey characterizes as “manly”. Kesey promotes sexism in this way because of how he characterizes women to look and act in a masculine

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Randall McMurphy, the protagonist of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest has an unlikely destination at a mental hospital in Oregon. There, he fights against the system that has been imposed on his recently made friends in the hospital, such as Billy Bibbit and Chief Bromden, who he helps overcome the unfair system imposed on them. With his imminent battle for power against the institution, McMurphy is an archetypal Christ-like hero, although some of his actions aren’t Christ-like. The duel between him and Nurse Ratched ends in the ultimate de-throning of Ratched and McMurphy achieving what he wants to do-- even if he wasn’t there to witness it.

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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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In the novel, One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest, Kesey writes from the perspective of a patient Chief Bromden, a schizophrenic patient who is pretending to be deaf and "dumb" on a psychiatric ward in Oregon in the 1950s. The novel encapsulates the story of a new patient, R.P. McMurphy, who is introduced to the ward where patients experience much abuse until McMurphy is admitted and changes everything with his charismatic personality. McMurphy is in a constant struggle to feed confidence to the men on the ward in an effort to help them stand up for themselves. However he is very selfish and uses his charisma for personal gain as well as acts of justice. Using his charm, Murphy takes advantage not only of the evil bane of the ward Nurse Rachted,

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