The Importance of Sexuality in Ken Kesey´s Novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo´s Nest

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The importance of sexuality is one of the most odd and misconceived elements of Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Instead of a war between races and genders, this novel is about the complication of living in a prevailing democracy where one party has ultimate control over the other. The novel includes a democracy where one must be willing to live as a slave or a defender, one must be willing to have it all or have absolutely nothing, and every patient has very little control over that choice. In an Oregon psychiatric hospital; the male patients are divided into the Acutes, who can be cured, and Chronics, who cannot be cured at all. The mental patients are dominated by Nurse Ratched, a prior army nurse who controls the ward with jagged and sterile precision. During daily group meetings, she instigates the patients to attack one another in their most shameful areas, humiliating them into submission. Chief Bromden, the half Indian narrator of the novel, shows us through his delirium that the hospital is not what it appears to be. Beneath the walls of the ward lies a deep rooted sexual repression and the patients are manipulated into believing that the daily torture they experience is for their well being. Although the institution implies that having a healthy expression of sexuality is the key to sanity, in reality, the ward does the exact opposite.

The suppression of life and sexuality inside of the institution are displayed through the Big Nurse. The emphasis on how Nurse Ratched tries to hide her large breasts shows that she feels vulnerable being a female but it also relates to the restraint of sexuality that she puts on the patients. Every little thing about her and the ward is mechanical, bitter, and empty. Fr...

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...live within a democracy that expects them to participate, to hold an opinion and thereby control and be responsible for their society- but at the same time, they must surrender and follow the will of others if even the slightest majority disagrees with them? Either way, I would be lost and destroyed, by myself, out of self disgust, or by my society because I would appear to be threatening. There is a possibility that I could choose something different, learn from the destruction of others, and live into a new system. I would rise above the choice of being savior versus a slave, a survivor versus a victim, and become an adult that does not need to rebel against or cave into my culture. People say that the story is racist and sexist. They say that Kesey attacks blacks and women, making the villains. Based on whether we accept that theory or not, I love this story.

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