One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest | Moby Dick vs. Big Nurse. A Feminist Defense of a Misogynist Text: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
In the following excerpt, Laura Quinn argues that despite its language, sexual content, and graphic portrayal of psychological treatments, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest can be a valuable subject for high-school discussion if issues of sexism and racism are addressed.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey's 1962 novel of life in a hospital for the mentally ill, is a document of the sixties. Its anti-insti-tutionalism, its celebration of boisterous rebellion against a seemingly rational (but actually unnecessarily repressive) establishment spoke to a generation of long-haired beaded and bearded anti-war activists. That the novel records something important to that era is not enough (perhaps) to justify its inclusion in a public school curriculum, we generally seek a universal and timeless quality in the works we teach to students. One...
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