Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Julian Moynihan in The New York Review of Books wrote about the novel in 1964 and called it "a very beautiful and inventive book violated by a fifth-rate idea which made Woman, in alliance with modern technology, the destroyer of masculinity and sensuous enjoyment" (Moynihan 14). Big Nurse is the melodramatic device in the novel that stands for the human manifestation of the machine. She is the one who controls the men's psychiatric ward, and this control is itself a telling indictment as she is made to appear as one more interested in control than in offering the succor we expect of nurses. She is not the only castrating woman in the story. Moynihan points out that several of the men in the ward, including the narrator, were shoved into mental illness by domineering mothers or wives (another element glossed over in the film). The good life for these patients is consorting with a good woman, who would be a prostitute, and in running loose with men and occasionally consorting with prosti

. . .
rican literature that goes back, at least, to Dame Van Winkle and that percolates through the popular fiction of the nineteenth century in the form of domestic tyranny (Martin 44). Big Nurse is the villain in the novel, and she is less a real character than a symbol. Kesey himself has said that a story needs a villain who is truly evil and not just bad, and he has provided such a villain in this novel. He uses caricature to show Big Nurse as the embodiment of oppression. To those on the ward "she is simply the Enemy, the focal point of their fears, frustrations, and angers" (Porter 48). She has a compulsiveness for order, control, power, and punishment, and this has been conditioned in her by the Combine, the same force that has placed the inmates in her care: "She is in this light as much a victim as a victimizer, but she does not see herself as a victim, and she generates no sympathy because Kesey does not allow her to grow beyond caricature" (Porter 48). There are certain aspects of her character and background that are noted in the text. Nurse Ratched is an ex-army nurse, a reason for her dedication to regimentation and routine. Bromden says of her: "A mistake was made somehow in manufacturing, putting those big
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
Review Books, Nurse Ratched, Cuckoo's Nest, Van Winkle, Bromden McMurphy, Murphy Martin, Diesel Kesey, Martin McMurphy's, Milos Forman, Nicholson McMurphy, flew cuckoo's, flew cuckoo's nest, cuckoo's nest, nurse ratched, idea woman, york review, chief bromden, villain novel, review books, porter 48, york review books,
Approximate Word count = 1235
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)

More Essays on Ken Kesey One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest