Controlling a Mountain

A passage that has been floating around in my head for a while now, is the one on page 68 when McMurphy and Harding debate about Nurse Ratchet. Harding rasises the question "how does one go about showing a woman who's boss...How does he show her who's king of the mountain?" and then goes on to say that a man can't hit a woman, and he can't yell at her, so really what can he do? The solution he comes up with is that "man has but one true effective weapon against the juggernaut of modern matriarchy, but it certainly is not laughter. One weapon, and with every passing year in this hip, motivationally researched society, more and more people are now discovering how to render that weapon useless and conquer those who have hitherto been the conqueres." I think this conversation says a lot about Kesey and his oppions on gender. Since we've been looking into Freud's theories, the mountain Harding refers to could relate to females because landscape is a symbol for them. So now this statement Harding makes becomes much more significant and now means that man is not only the king of the "house", but the conquerer of all women; Kesey also suggests that the only way men can gain this power is with their physical masculinity. The problem in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest is that Big Nurse often removes the men's masculinity by speaking down to them or telling them they are homosexual. I think that perhaps Kesey feels the same way in that the only way a man can gain power is by using his sexuality as an advantage. McMurphy is an excellent example; he's the "sex maniac" and the only one the ward doesn't seem to be getting to or being able to break down. The scene where he goes to pick up the small nurse's water can, and she screams telling him that she's catholic and that he dare not touch her, on page 80, shows just how much power he has because of his pysical masculinity. Lastly, I think that because Big Nurse is portrayed as such a powerful and man-crushing woman, and that really she is the only woman discussed frequently, that Kesey feels women have to much power over men, when really it should be the men with the power.