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Adam asked this question about One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest:
I have long thought of this book as one of my favorites, but noticed some heavy racist and misogynistic undertones when I re-read it. Much of this was left out of the film. Does old fashioned sexism sully an otherwise great work of literature?
wikipedial whuerell I don't think the work is critical of the racist or misogynistic viewpoints it puts forward, as I've heard some people say on the subject of this book…moreI don't think the work is critical of the racist or misogynistic viewpoints it puts forward, as I've heard some people say on the subject of this book (in real life, I haven't read any responses like that), but it certainly leaves room for these to exist without being taken at face value. I believe Kesey himself held racist and misogynistic views, and that's why his work turned out the way it is, but his book is intentionally like a choose-your-own-adventure for interpretation at every corner. Because the books theme is itself battling conformity and looking closer into what it is you don't see, you can very easily see our main character -- Bromden -- as a case study. Bromden sees through the power play within the psych ward, he learned it first between his rez and the US government, but we also see all the ways he fails to see through the conformist "fog", to put it in his very literal terms. For a lot of the book, our narrator describes how he is incapable of looking at the reality around him because he's swallowed in a blinding fog. So, as readers, most likely reading outside the author's intention, it wouldn't be textually inconsistent to see other forms of fog to blind Bromden and the rest. The black skin of the black boys -- who never even get a name -- are a fog, blinding the white patients (as well as Bromden) to reality. Candy, who is usually called "the whore" or "the girl", and very rarely her actual name, is clothed in a fog, her gender, demeanor, the literal clothes she's wearing, which blinds everyone to the reality of who she is and what they're doing with her. There are also other points where the text could support something more critical -- McMurphy is literally diagnosed a psychopath. The narrator (and author) want this itself to be what is questioned -- they call a man a psychopath just for being a man! -- but we can also read this diagnosis as true, and read Bromden and the other men as manipulated by McMurphy's Strong Man persona. Everything McMurphy convinces them to do is actually in his own benefit, so you could easily interpret it as the men changing their subordination from one dictator -- The Nurse -- to another -- McMurphy. They do this because he presents with strength and masculinity, which all the men interpret as good, and she presents controlling,cold, and conniving, which all the men interpret as feminine evil. Clearly both The Nurse and McMurphy are terrible human beings driven by power and control over vulnerable people. Its not absolutely necessary to read the book with the moral, "the men chose X so what does that say about X?" but instead as a character study, "the men chose X so what does that say about the men?".(less)
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One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
by Ken Kesey
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