Cuckoo's Nest Dictatorship

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Emmanuel Kalibala English In One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey focuses on the power struggle between a dictatorship as seen in Nurse Ratched, and a democracy as seen in McMurphy. Both leaders fight for power over the patient’s. Nurse Ratched wants to control the ward, but she has competition from another patient, McMurphy. He is Nurse Ratched’s enemy who is taking all her power from her in the ward. When she needs that power and control she manipulates and plays the patients and the staff. If Nurse Ratched wants something done, she will use her her forceful will to fulfill her desires. She shows dictatorship by doing all of this. “She stops and nods at some of the patients come to stand around and stare out of eyes all red and …show more content…

I do not believe Mcmurphy is being psychopath when he can make the other patients happy and help them get back the power Nurse Ratched snatched from them. “But the rest are even scared to open up and laugh. You know, that's the first thing that got me about this place, that there wasn't anybody laughing. I haven't heard a real laugh since I came through that door, do you know that? Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.” ( Part 1) First thing McMurphy does is help these patients stand up for themselves against Nurse Ratched. They don’t have much fun, or anything to make them laugh in the ward. However, when McMurphy arrives he wants to change that and let them be free. To be a leader, a person has to be a good manipulator which McMurphy is. McMurphy is a good manipulator like Nurse Ratched, but in a different way. When McMurphy introduced his votes to watch the World Series game, he did not have enough votes. “There are forty patients in the ward, Mcmurphy. Forty patients, and only twenty voted.” (pg 140) McMurphy did not have enough votes to watch the World Series, because the chronics could not vote for him. As for McMurphy not getting the votes he wanted the meeting was closed. “If somebody’d of come in and took a look, men watching a blank TV, a fifty-year old woman hollering and squealing at the back of their heads about discipline and order and recriminations.” (145)

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