Sexism - Racism in one Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Now First and Foremost, i must Explain this, I payed little attention to the novel and movie, but this Essay will more then likley get you a C or a B, Depending on if you make changes to the paragraph that starts with

The portrayal of woman in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest is in a way, a role reversal. The Woman are strong, leaders and feed off the power they possess as the men are weak, passive-non aggressors who get ordered around and (until the introduction of McMurphy) have no say in what activities or what happens.

it retells the story too much and needs fixing but i think that i have almost done this with my final copy, please e-mail me on kippa_dog@hotmail.com if you can think of a better way of putting it.also, make sure that the Language is set to your countrys in microsoft word and fix all the "errors" made by my document seeing as im from Australia. with all that done, heres the Essay, esse!

Word count: 1017

One flew over the cuckoo’s nest has been criticized for its treatment of race and gender. Why do you think this is the case? Discuss this appraisal of the novel

Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest has been criticized because of its treatment of race and gender. Due to many different themes in the story, such criticism is deserved because of its blatant

misuse of imagery to depict woman and black men in the story. Nurse Ratched who is the head nurse of the mental ward in the story, rules with an iron fist, has descriptively large breasts in the story and is portrayed as a stereotypical mean old woman. Vera Harding is another good example; she is the openly sexual and attractive wife of dale Harding, also a patient at the ward, who goes around when at the ward and flirts with other men. There is also the issue of the friends of main protagonist McMurphy, two prostitutes who show up occasionally in the novel and are depicted as mere objects. All of these women are portrayed negatively; the women are depicted as either frigid monsters or whores, in fact, the woman are portrayed so that the only "good" women in the novel are the good-hearted prostitute.

There is also the issue of the mistreatment of the African-American nurse’s aides towards the patients’ by Kesey, with mentions of them being sadistic sodomites, and implications that they are inferior to white people in society by general assumptions due to Kesey’s writing style. He also uses a large amount of stereotypes in the novel, like the small wage earning African-American, the hard, mean old woman and the slutty woman. The value of all these in the novel is to steer away from the certain stereotypes that Ken Kesey has presented so that one may become a better person in a way.

The portrayal of woman in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest is in a way, a role reversal. The Woman are strong, leaders and feed off the power they possess as the men are weak, passive-non aggressors who get ordered around and (until the introduction of McMurphy) have no say in what activities or what happens. Unlike the other head nurses of the mental hospital, Nurse Ratched thrives off the power that she holds, and demands control of every aspect of her patient’s lives. This makes the patients refer to her as a "bitch". This is undeserved, Ratched is merely doing her job and asserting herself in the book, the comments that are put in are unnecessary and sexist to the advancement to woman in the workplace. She also is able to control her superiors, such as Dr. Spivey, head of the mental hospital, through shear intimidation, making her a cow once again by asserting herself. Kesey chose to portray Ratched as a stereotypical unlikable old woman. By many patients, especially by Randle Patrick McMurphy, Nurse Ratched is referred to in blatant sexual terms. The following description was giving by the narrator, Chief Bromden in the beginning of the book.

“Her face is smooth, calculated, and precision-made, like an expensive baby doll, skin like flesh-coloured enamel, blend of white and cream and baby-blue eyes, small nose, pink little nostrils-everything working together except the colour on her lips and fingernails, and the size of her bosom. 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.”

-Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest page 11. London: Picador, 1962

The implication here is that the only real women are those whose big breasts make them objects of desire for men.

McMurphy undermines Big Nurse's power over the other male patients by characterizing her as a "bitch" a "buzzard" and a "ball-cutter"