Power In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Abraham Lincoln once said “if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” By saying this, Lincoln bestows that power has the ability to change people--ultimately for the worse. If both were in the same generation, Machiavelli and Lincoln would have been great friends. Machiavelli expanded on Lincoln’s thoughts by stating: “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Machiavelli believes that if one is given utter power, that person’s mindset will become unscrupulous. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey and the Stanford Prison Experiment with leading investigator Philip Zimbardo include numerous examples that further develop and defend Machiavelli’s quote. Absolute power starts its course of corruption by creating inflated personalities.

Moreover, the same evil Nurse Ratched pushed a patient to take his own life. A patient named Billy Bibbit was finally making a sexual interaction with a women. Nurse Ratched found out and was appalled. She terrorized Billy while threatening to tell his mother. This terror lead Billy to suicide. After Billy was found with his throat cut, Nurse Ratched refused to take any blame. She said to McMurphy, another patient in the hospital: “I hope you’re satisfied. Playing with human lives” (Kesey 318). The nurse completely blamed Billy’s suicide on McMurphy. She yelled at McMurphy, “as if you thought yourself to be a God” (Kesey 318). This quote is extremely ironic. Nurse Ratched thinks that she is the God. Nurse Ratched thinks that she can do no wrong. Her personality is so inflated that she refuses to take any blame for the death of someone else. Her power has corrupted her mind. In addition, within the Stanford Prison Experiment, Stanford University students who participated were given a role as either a prisoner or a guard. The guards were given absolute power. Zimbardo wrote on his website, “The guards were given no specific training on how to be guards.” The guards were free to do whatever they thought was necessary to maintain control and

Those who are given absolute power become so corrupt that they treat others very poorly. Going back to Nurse Ratched: she started abusing her power with small things like taking away her patients’ cigarettes. She only allowed each patient to have a pack a day. Getting to a higher extremity, Nurse Ratched threatened to take away the patient's’ game room--one of the few things that they can do within the hospital. Nurse Ratched yelled at the patients, “there would be a certain justice in taking away the privilege of the tub room” (Kesey 200). Nurse Ratched is using her power to punish the patients just because things are not going her way. To an even higher extremity: Nurse Ratched wished shock therapy on her patients. Instead of helping her patients when they act out, she abuses her power and has the patients shocked. For example, after McMurphy got into a run down with the Big Nurse, she wished the shock therapy on him instantly. The texts states, “they gave McMurphy three more treatments that week” (Kesey 289). Nurse Ratched used her power to physically hurt people and literally shock the life out of people. To the highest extremity: Nurse Ratched made one of her patients go into a vegetative state. Because she was not getting her way with McMurphy, she killed off his personality. She used her power to get McMurphy lobotomized. The text states, “in heavy black letters,