Bromden is a mixed Native American with a white mother and tribal father. His heritage taught him to love the natural world, but his mother traumatized him by forcing his father to sell his tribal lands to the government. This left Chief to deal with immense mental trauma, and he began to despise the government and society in general, for they were the reasons for the destruction of his childhood. This demonstrates the conformist nature of society and how certain races and social classes are able to manipulate the lower classes through bribery and false promises.

Ratched constantly belittles, frightens, and emasculates all of the men on the ward. She scares them into not challenging her authority. All throughout the story, she tries so hard to disguise her gender by concealing her very large breasts under a sterile, flat white nurse's uniform. The purpose of Nurse Ratched is to prove the castration of men by women, but an underlying theme of her character is a woman's desire to conceal her gender due to a woman's place in society being lesser than that of a man.

Walter is very concerned with being perceived as masculine, bit not in a superficial way. He wants his son to admire him and he wants to provide for his family and give them comfortable lives. He believes the key to masculinity is wealth, and he can only reach his goals through money. He is even willing to be belittled and degraded for this reason. This shows how strongly social class affects our minds, and how society's ideas of wealth and fortune have infiltrated even the most honorable of morals.

Hamlet is a high noble. He is boastful, well educated, and skilled. He treats women as a lower entity to him, a typical behavior of men at that time. This is historically evident in the middle ages. He also often contemplated the meanings of life and death, which were evident of his higher education. Hamlet is an example of hereditary aristocracy and being born into wealth-luck of the draw.

As a female "noble," Ophelia relies on men to determine her behavior. She is subservient to and dependent on them- as she is seen as an ideal figure in society, she must succumb to proper etiquette and behavior. Even though she is another example of inherited fortune, she is still seen as a lower entity than men due to the patriarchal society of the middle ages. She is abused by Hamlet and used as a spy by her father. The two men who should respect her the most in the world just use her as a pawn.

In the Lottery, women have very little control over their own lives. The men run the lottery and hold government positions, and they even draw for the families. Also, when a woman marries, she is absorbed into the husbands family for the lottery. These are all common traits of typical patriarchal societies seen in history.