One Flew Over The Cuckoo\'s Nest

3 Pages 672 Words

Men and women are stereotyped everyday on how they should act and behave. What should be the difference in the book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest? Well one could say that the roles have been reversed to a certain point. The mental hospital is a little world inside that is a made to scale prototype of the big world outside (McMahan). Patients are entered under the nurse’s power and will be released when they can contribute to society again.
In the book as one can guess, some stereotypes are backwards. Nurse Ratched is one woman in the story that doesn’t play to the role of a nurse. The big nurse’s name, Ratched, suggests “ratchet” (a mechanism consisting of a notched wheel, the teeth of which engage with a pawl, permitting motion of the wheel in one direction only)(Macmillan). Her name makes her out to be an unchangeable character. Nurse Ratched is more made out to be a machine then a real person, unlike the other nurses, who seem to be kind, caring, and compassionate. Totally opposite of Nurse Ratched is the prostitutes. These women are fun free spirits that enjoy spending time with the patients and doesn’t try to humiliate or ware down the men to feel nothing. These are the two main types of women in the story and how they act towards the patients.
Kesey takes the worst male stereotype available--that of over-weening power, control, force, manipulation --and imposes it on the nurse in the book, and the worst female stereotype-- pettiness, bitchiness, lack of self-confidence, anxiousness to serve--and imposes it on most of the male patients (McMahan). Women are stereotyped in the novel just not as one would think. The novel may give women a more masculine view, but I would not go, as far as to say it is a sexiest view. If the novel was charged with being sexiest it would have to be against the men for making them look like sissies. The woman stereotype is getting old anyway. Women of this time are taking more of a ma...