Cuckoo's Nest Emasculation Quotes

The idea of emasculation is present in the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey, which is displayed through the characters and events that occur. Emasculation is defined as, to deprive a man of his male role or identity (dictionary.com) in which many characters like Nurse Ratched successfully accomplish to do so all throughout the book. Nurse Ratched uses emasculating strategies in order to strip away the men’s power in the (1) diverse ward. Many of the emasculating characters titles allows them to have empowerment, specifically Nurse Ratched's, which enables her to make the patients fear her. Not only does Nurse Ratched emasculate the men in the ward, but also Billy’s mother, Chief’s mother, and Harding’s wife proving the idea …show more content…
The men had already been emasculated by society before they voluntarily committed themselves in the ward but the Nurse still tries to emasculate them further by using tactics such as intimidation, personality changing pills, and electroshock therapy. She makes sure that the patients are under her strict, (2) banal, and (3) elaborative schedule, acting in an obedient and despondent manner. Nurse Ratched reaches to any extent to (4) garner any information she has on the patients and reveals it during the one of the meetings including McMurphy. She obtains some news about McMurphy’s past and tries to present them to the other patients in order to weaken McMurphy. “Right at your balls. No, that nurse ain’t some kinda monster chicken, buddy, what she is is a ball cutter. I’ve seen thousand of ‘em, old and young, men and women. Seen ‘em all over the country and in the homes-people who try to make you weak so they can get you to toe the line, to follow their rules, to live like they want you to. And the best way to do this, to get you to knuckle under, is to weaken you by gettin’ you where it hurts the worst” (Kesey 60). After the meeting, McMurphy states that it was like a “peckin’ party” in which the nurse is similar to the chicken who sees a spot of blood and begins to tear the other chickens apart just like in the ward. McMurphy begins to explain how human beings like the Big Nurse are …show more content…
Dale Harding is an intellectual and well educated man who is married to his wife although, he is being indicated as a homosexual. Harding has himself committed into the ward due to social prejudice who are against homosexuals. Harding’s wife (12) flouts that he is “limp wristed” and is embarrassed when he reveals his “pretty” hands. Harding quickly hides them, making him feel inferior because his wife and McMurphy stares at his feminine hands which is a symbol of his sexuality. An additional character that creates a patient to feel emasculated is Billy Bibbit’s mother. Since Billy Bibbit’s mother has a hold on him, due to the fact that Billy has not been with a woman since he attempted to propose to one, he has been feeling emasculated. Before entering in the ward, Billy had a girlfriend but his mother believes his girlfriend was beneath Billy. Billy’s mother, is a close friend to Nurse Ratched which shows that they have the same qualities, the qualities of emasculation. “Mother, I’m th-th-thirty-one years old!” She laughed and twiddled his ear with the weed. “Sweetheart, do i look like the mother of a middle-aged woman?”(Kesey 295). In part 4, Billy reveals that he wants to go back to college and get married but his mother expresses that he has a whole life ahead of him. She also expresses to him that she does not look like a mother of a 30 year old. He (13)acquiesces, not being able to say anything back,