What does it mean to comment on a character's masculinity?

[apu99992]

My english teacher recently assigned my class an essay prompt regarding the character Chief in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. It asks us to 'comment on Chief's masculinity and how it may have been compromised' using pages 210-214 (Chief's flashback to the day he encounter three white people who wanted to construct a dam), but I don't know whether I should identify who makes Chief lose his masculinity, find some important characteristic of Chief's masculinity, state why he loses his masculinity, or just explain how it happened. From the prompt it's clear that the essay has to have an argument, but none of the ideas I've listed above seem to be provable or arguable. Does the prompt really just want any argument about Chief's masculinity, or is there more too it that I don't understand? How do you respond to such a prompt, and how can you write anything valid that you can demonstrate? It seems to me that the only thing even remotely provable would be some type of characteristic about Chief's masculinity (he becomes overtly masculine in response to..., he always represses his masculinity when he encounters...) but there doesn't seem to be any evidence for any of these traits within 210-214. I can reference other parts of the book, but the prompt tells me to focus on these pages, and my teacher told me it would actually be possible to write a good essay on these five pages alone. I don't know whether I should go through the entire book page by page and treat the essay as if it wants me to use the entire book, or whether I should just follow my teacher's advice. I would appreciate any information on these topics.