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“Whoa, Man!”: the Lack of Feminization in Ernest Hemingway’s the Sun Also Rises and Ken Kesey’s One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest

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“Whoa, Man!”: the Lack of Feminization in Ernest Hemingway’s the Sun Also Rises and Ken Kesey’s One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Blair Shemwell
Mrs. Sandifer
English IV AP / Dual Enrollment
12 Feb. 2010
“Whoa, Man!”:
The Lack of Feminization in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and
Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest While Ernest Hemingway and Ken Kesey’s writing style and plot details are often found on opposite ends of the literary spectrum, The Sun Also Rises and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest are similar in that the main female characters both share masculine qualities that were strengthened due to war. In The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway “not only contributes to the body of travel literature that offers an insider’s perspective on the lifestyle of the self-exiled writers, artists, and bon vivants who made Paris in the 1920s legendary, but also mythologizes this historic moment” (Field 36). Lady Brett Ashley is a “symbol of this post-war environment” in that her power comes from “preying on the weakness of a society devalued by the breakdown of pre-war values and ideals” (Wilentz 189). On the other hand, “Nurse Ratched—a sterile, distant, and oppressive force who psychologically castrates [her] male patients—represents Kesey’s fears of a cold war era that fosters an impotent, feminine American masculinity through a climate of fear and conformity” (Meloy 3). Kesey’s criticism of a “cold-war society that he believed fundamentally emasculated men strikes a chord in contemporary America” (4). In both Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, men are not capable of being dominant in their shattered environments; therefore, masculine qualities must ironically be found in the female characters Lady Brett Ashley and Nurse Ratched, which emphasizes the destructive atmospheres of post-war Europe and the Cold War Era. Lady Brett Ashley is one of Hemingway’s “richest” female characters; “her personality gradually emerges as an intriguing mix of femininity and masculinity, strength and vulnerability, morality and dissolution” (Fulton



Cited: Adair, William. “‘The Sun Also Rises’: A Memory of War” Twentieth Century Literature 47.1 (2001): 72-91. JSTOR. Web. 1 Feb. 2010. Alvarado, Sonya Yvette. “Em’ly in the Cuckoo’s Nest” Midwest Quarterly 38.4 (1997): 351-362 EBSCOhost. Web. 1 Feb. 2010. Elliott, Ira. “Performance Art: Jake Barnes and ‘Masculine’ Signification in The Sun Also Rises” American Literature 67.1 (1995): 77-94. JSTOR. Web. 26 Jan. 2010. Fantina, Richard. “Hemingway’s Masochism, Sodomy, and the Dominant Woman” Hemingway Review 23.1 (2003): 84-105. EBSCOhost. Web. 1 Feb. 2010. Field, Allyson Nadia. “Expatriate Lifestyle as a Tourist Destination: The Sun Also Rises and Experiential Travelogues of the Twenties” Hemingway Review 25.2 (2006): 29-43. EBSCOhost. Web. 1 Feb. 2010. Fulton, Lorie Watkins. “Reading Around Jake’s Narration: Brett Ashley and The Sun Also Rises” Hemingway Review 24.1 (2004): 61-80. EBSCOhost. Web. 1 Feb. 2010. Gefin, Lazlo K. “The Breasts of Big Nurse: Satire Versus Narrative in Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” Modern Language Studies 22.1 (1992): 96-101. JSTOR. Web. 26 Jan. 2010. Hemingway, Ernest. The Sun Also Rises. Charles Scribner’s Sons: Jonathan Cape, 1926. Print. Huffman, James R. “The Cuckoo Clocks in Kesey’s Nest” Modern Language Studies 7.1 (1977): 62-73. JSTOR. Web. 1 Feb. 2010. Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Viking Press: Signet Books, 1962. Print. Meloy, Michael. “Fixing Men: Castration, Impotence, and Masculinity in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” Journal of Men’s Studies 17.1 (2009): 3-14. EBSCOhost. Web. 1 Feb. 2010. Michel, Sonya. “Danger on the Home Front: Motherhood, Sexuality, and Disabled Veterans in American Postwar Films” Journal of the History of Sexuality 3.1 (1992): 109-128. JSTOR. Web. 1 Feb. 2010. Nolan, Jr., Charles. “‘A Little Crazy’: Psychiatric Diagnoses of Three Hemingway Women Characters” Hemingway Review 28.2 (2009): 105-120. EBSCOhost. Web. 1 Feb. 2010. Onderdonk, Todd. “‘Bitched’: Feminization, Identity, and the Hemingwayesque in The Sun Also Rises” Twentieth Century Literature 52.1 (2006): 61-91. JSTOR. Web. 26 Jan. 2010. Schmidt, Dolores Barracano. “The Great American Bitch” College English 32.8 (1971): 900- 905. JSTOR. Web. 1 Feb. 2010. Vitkus, Daniel J. “Madness and Misogyny in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics 14 (1994): 64-90. JSTOR. Web. 26 Jan. 2010. Wilentz, Gay. “(Re)Teaching Hemingway: Anti-Semitism as a Thematic Device in The Sun Also Rises” College English 52.2 (1990): 186-193. JSTOR. Web. 1 Feb. 2010.

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