Helene Cioux: The Laugh of the Medusa The Laugh of the Medusa is about how women shouldn’t be afraid to express themselves through literature. The article is written from a feminist’s point of view. According to the article, women are afraid to write in a world that is controlled by men. I chose a paragraph from the article to summarize: “Men have committed the greatest crime against women. Insidiously, violently, they have led them to hate women, to be their own enemies, to mobilize their immense strength against themselves, to be the executants of their virile needs.
“Yes” is the answer this machine wants. A “but” is frowned upon. A “no” is suicidal. In Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, society clearly exerts this kind of power by seemingly “choosing” the inhabitants of the mental ward. It even delegates the delightful Nurse Ratched to govern their pitiful existence.
Her boisterousness and hostility is epitomised in the stage direction [She strikes him]. This indicates that Katherina employs physical abuse as a self defense mechanism against Petruchio. Such violent behavior was classed as shrew-like and highly unorthodox in the Elizabethan Era, particularly towards a male suitor of a high social class. Thus, Katherina challenges the values of courtship and marriage, in a way that is relevant to her society. Correspondingly, in 10 Things I Hate About You, Kat rebels against the social expectations of the permeating values of courtship and dating.
Randle McMurphy is a convict, accused of statutory rape charges, who feigns mental illness in order to be relieved of his work detail. Once McMurphy is admitted into the asylum he befriends several other patients and becomes a hero figure to them through his rebellion towards Nurse Ratched and her strict order she has instilled into the asylum. He is a very social individual and free spirit who accepts the other patients as inmates. McMurphy is non judgmental and does not make the other patients feel like social outcasts. He is a foil to the character of Nurse Ratched, who tries to create order by playing on the weaknesses of the inmates in an attempt to get them to conform to social norms.
Kessey uses the emasculation of men first and primarily with Nurse Ratched. Nurse Ratched is both infamous (2) and conspicuous (3) for her desire to exercise complete control over the men who are under her jurisdiction, regardless of whether you’re a patient or an employee. Even though there are employees, such as doctors, ranked above her, she still feels it’s ultimately her decision on any matter occurring in the ward and the male employees let this be. This is evident in Part Two during the staff meeting where the doctors agree on sending McMuphy to the disturbed ward mainly because they felt it’s what Nurse Ratched would have wanted. She replied, “No.
Atwood presents Offred as a symbol of rebellion. Offred lives in a dystopian society where women are treaded as mere objects. They are refused the right to express their emotions, to read, to dress as they please, and to be with anyone they choose. The government is a theocracy which cherishes life and is strictly against abortion. Offred copes with the oppression of her government with small acts of rebellion and the memories of the past.
The psychiatric ward in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey directly represents a society in which free thinking is rejected. Randal McMurphy, the protagonist in the story, symbolizes the free spirit, or the one who is on the journey to truth because of his outgoing personality and want to break the rules. As the story progresses, McMurphy teaches the other patients about how to push boundaries, and stay true to yourself in order to find truth. In a similar way, the poem Brahma by Ralph Waldo Emerson takes over the persona of Brahma, a Hindu god, who reveals two important facts about the journey for the self. Brahma teaches that all things, no matter how unrelated, are part of a bigger picture or purpose, and that material goods are worth nothing when it comes to finding truth.
From the novel, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the most important element that is kept by Forman is the cruelty of the ward. It is the underlying reason behind many of the patients’ actions, such as the rebellion when all the Acutes went against Nurse Ratched, the head nurse, by voting with McMurphy to watch the World Series (Kesey 124). It is what McMurphy fights against in his attempt to reawaken the patients to the Outside. By choosing to include this element, both Kesey and Forman give the reader insight to the events that occur on the ward, especially the rebellion at the end where Chief Bromden escapes the ward and its cruelty. Ken Kesey shows the cruelty of the ward through Chief Bromden’s inner thoughts.
He suffers from hallucinations and severe delusions that clog his worldview. He fears most of all a thing he refers to as “the Combine,” a corporation type thing that controls everything in society and forces people to conform to the certain society norm. He pretends to be deaf and dumb, almost to make himself appear invisible, which was difficult being that he was 6’7’’. The hospital is run by a woman by the name of Nurse Ratched, the novel’s antagonist, who Chief refers to as “the Big Nurse.” She is a former army nurse and runs her ward with an iron fist.
Of Mice and Men Stereotypes Known for the Dustbowl, the Great Depression, prohibition, and the woman’s suffrage movement, the Roaring Twenties’ is a landmark in American History. The book Of Mice and Men gives us a dry, graphic flashback to what this era was all about. It exposes the prejudices that drive so many human interactions still to this day. John Steinbeck uses stereotypes to convey his message of what life was truly like in the twenties for the discriminated: women, mentally challenged, elderly, and African-Americans. Women’s role in society changed significantly, blacks were still suppressed, the mentally challenged were thought worthless and easily manipulated, and the elderly were seen as decrepit and useless souls.