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

Introduction

With the exclusion of the prostitutes, who are depicted as good, the women in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest are consistently intimidating and terrifying figures. Bromden, the narrator, and McMurphy, the protagonist, both are inclined to recount the pain of the mental patients as a issue of emasculation or castration at the hands of Nurse Ratched and the clinic supervisor, who is furthermore a woman. The worry of women is one of the novel's most centered features. The male individual characteristics appear to acquiesce with Harding, who deplores, “We are victims ...