Analysis Of The Nurse In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Through the addled perspective of the patients, Ken Kesey portrays Nurse Ratched as a callous, despotic matriarch who oversees her mental institution with an iron-fist concealed by a sickeningly sweet persona within the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Significantly, Kesey manifests the nurse’s cold, mechanical demeanor through Chief Bromden’s schizophrenic projections. For instance, Bromden introduces the “Big Nurse” as “[sitting] in the center of [a] web of wires like a watchful robot, [tending] her network with mechanical skill”(30). By comparing the nurse to a vicious arachnid, Kesey demonstrates her lethality as a predator who, upon ensnaring her victims, promptly drains the life from them. Additionally, Kesey juxtaposes the nurse’s insect-like qualities with artificial, mechanical traits.

Throughout the novel, Kesey reinforces this comparison to a machine, describing the nurse’s smile as a “red-hot wire’ and “like a radiator grill”(89,87).

Obviously, Kesey’s analogies epitomize the nurse’s rigid, unforgiving composure and utter lack of typical human emotions such as compassion and empathy for the plight of her oppressed patients. In fact, the nurse resorts to intimidation techniques, torture, and psychological warfare to manipulate the patient’s into fearful obedience, which is witnessed when Harding, in a brainwashed state, refers to her as a “sweet, smiling, tender angel of mercy”(57). On the surface, Kesey displays the nurse’s façade of genuine concern and caring dedication for each patient’s treatment. However, as a con man himself, McMurphy easily sees through her disguise and employs a persuasive series of animalistic comparisons to expose her truly wicked

nature. Initially, McMurphy, after experiencing the “therapeutic” meeting, likens the nurse to a chicken whose first peck leads to a “peckin’ party” where the rest of the flock, or rather the patients, tear each other apart (55). Here, Kesey illustrates Nurse Ratched’s maniacal strategy of “insinuation” where she effortlessly gets the patients to break down each other’s psyches without getting her hands dirty; She even manages to get the patients to confess to deviant actions that they never actually committed (60). Furthermore, McMurphy depicts the nurse as a wolf who has turned the men into cowering rabbits. He also refers to her as a “ball-cutter” (60). Clearly, Kesey suggests that the male patients’ submission to a dominant female goes against the natural hierarchy and is not just a detrimental mindset for the patients, but also is the primary reason for the men’s continued oppression. Notably, McMurphy and Bromden’s contrasting metaphors are related to their unique prior experiences such as how McMurphy worked on a farm, where as Bromden worked in an industrial setting with machinery. Thus, Kesey establishes Nurse Ratchet as a sadistic “juggernaut of modern matriarchy” by examining how the patients perceive the nurse, which is directly influenced by their backgrounds as well as their respective states of mind.