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The one who flew over the cuckoo's nest book analysis
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The book One Flew over the Cuckoo’s nest revolves around the patient’s struggle for basic freedom against the big nurse and her colleagues at the mental hospital.The main theme of this novel is that patients of mental illness up until a recent point in history have been mistreated.The book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest depicts a power struggle between the patients and the institute in a seemingly one sided fight against the tyrannical rule of the big nurse. Firstly There is the Nurse's controlled origins of the book. This is before and during the introduction of McMurphy, the book’s most important character. This is when she forced patients to consume unknown medicine, belittled them if they asked questions,and spent months cycling through different employees until she found the perfect group to manipulate. Chief witnesses a newer patient known as taber question what the hell he was given as there was a mysterious red pill. “But I mean what kind of medication. Christ, I can see that they’re …show more content…
pills-”(34). And the second that taber puts up a fight she proceeds to bully and belittle him because he doesn’t listen. “That’s all right, Miss Flinn” “If Mr. Taber chooses to act like a child, he may have to be treated as such” (34). This proves that the big Nurse can’t be trusted since she will give patients unkown medicine to patients and belittles and bullies them if they reject the unknown pill. This is evidence that the nurse has a hidden agenda to the way she runs the ward and has little room for the patients she is supposed to take care of. Next there is McMurphy and his constant rebellion against the ridiculous treatment of the patients and the numerous amount of stupid rules in the ward. He questioned everything from not being able to watch T.V., to the patients not ever leaving the ward, to even items as little as not being allowed to leave the cafeteria until a precise time with all the other patients. “Against ward policy?” “thats right” “Tough luck” (103) “Though McMurphy’s rebellion takes a light-hearted form, Nurse Ratched recognizes rebellion when she sees it.” (shmoop). This shows that even early on McMurphy is suspicious of the Nurse’s intentions and tries to fight all the unfair rules that the nurse has put up without any resistance. McMurphy’s rebellion is the apparent drive for change that the patients of the ward need to partake in to end their unfair treatment. Lastly there’s the Nurse’s last stand this is her apparent breaking point after being worn down by McMurphy’s resistance to everything that she enforces.
This is the end of the line for her, after McMurphy snuck in women and alcohol she ashamed Billy Bibbet so much that when she sent him to her office he grabbed a doctor's utensil and slit his throat.“ He cut his throat” : He opened the doctor’s desk and found some instruments and cut his throat…” (317). And she lobotomized McMurphy. ”The ward door opened, and the black boys wheeled in this Gurney with a char at the bottom that said in heavy black letters, MCMURPHY, RANDLE P., POST OPERATIVE.L And below this was written in ink, LOBOTOMY.” (321). This shows that the nurse was desperate and ruthless during the last part of the book and that she is willing to do anything to restore her idea of “order”.This proves that the Big Nurse is power hungry and ruthless and does not care what it takes to maintain her hold in the
ward. Nurse Ratched is not a good role model, and she is also a ruthless tyrant who will do anything to maintain power over her mistreated colleagues and patients. And will crush any form of rebellion no matter what the cost. She started of by mistreating patients in the beginning of the novel. McMurphy tried his best to rebel and free his fellow patients from Tyranny during the whole novel. And lastly the Big Nurse proved that she would do anything to maintain her power. There are many people on this planet who have, currently tried to, and will eventually try to have power over others no matter what the cost, and there will always be others who will rebel and attempt to free others from that tyranny.
...and they have no choice, but to follow it or else they can be put into the “Combine” as Bromden sees it. Near the end of the novel “she turned and walked into the Nurses’ Station and closed the door behind her”. When the nurse “walked” away, it shows how she no longer cares and Bromden will then start having a sense of feeling that he should do something because she just let Billy kill himself. The moment when Nurse Ratched “close[s] the door” is a sign for Bromden to gather his courage and help everyone to get out of this ward.
Nurse Ratched was head nurse of the ward. She needed to have control over everything. All of the patients feared Nurse Ratched, or as they sometimes call her, “Big Nurse.” That is everyone feared her until McMurphy. Because he refused to listen to Nurse Ratched, the “ruler” of the ward, it showed that there will be dismay between the two throughout the story.
The novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey tells a story of Nurse Ratched, the head nurse of a mental institution, and the way her patients respond to her harsh treatment. The story is told from the perspective of a large, Native-American patient named Bromden; he immediately introduces Randle McMurphy, a recently admitted patient, who is disturbed by the controlling and abusive way Ratched runs her ward. Through these feelings, McMurphy makes it his goal to undermine Ratched’s authority, while convincing the other patients to do the same. McMurphy becomes a symbol of rebellion through talking behind Ratched’s back, illegally playing cards, calling for votes, and leaving the ward for a fishing trip. His shenanigans cause his identity to be completely stolen through a lobotomy that puts him in a vegetative state. Bromden sees McMurphy in this condition and decides that the patients need to remember him as a symbol of individuality, not as a husk of a man destroyed by the
Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest explores the dysfunctions and struggles of life for the patients in a matriarch ruled mental hospital. As told by a schizophrenic Native American named Chief Bromden, the novel focuses primarily on Randle McMurphy, a boisterous new patient introduced into the ward, and his constant war with the Big Nurse Ratched, the emasculating authoritarian ruler of the ward. Constricted by the austere ward policy and the callous Big Nurse, the patients are intimidated into passivity. Feeling less like patients and more like inmates of a prison, the men surrender themselves to a life of submissiveness-- until McMurphy arrives. With his defiant, fearless and humorous presence, he instills a certain sense of rebellion within all of the other patients. Before long, McMurphy has the majority of the Acutes on the ward following him and looking to him as though he is a hero. His reputation quickly escalates into something Christ-like as he challenges the nurse repeatedly, showing the other men through his battle and his humor that one must never be afraid to go against an authority that favors conformity and efficiency over individual people and their needs. McMurphy’s ruthless behavior and seemingly unwavering will to protest ward policy and exhaust Nurse Ratched’s placidity not only serves to inspire other characters in the novel, but also brings the Kesey’s central theme into focus: the struggle of the individual against the manipulation of authoritarian conformists. The asylum itself is but a microcosm of society in 1950’s America, therefore the patients represent the individuals within a conformist nation and the Big Nurse is a symbol of the authority and the force of the Combine she represents--all...
In a staff meeting, Nurse Ratched gains her composure, and decides to use her position of authority to her advantage, when other professionals question whether McMurphy should be sent back to the working farm: “I expect her to get mad, but she doesn't; she just gives him that let’s-wait-and-see look...we have weeks, or months, or even years if need be. Keep in mind that Mr. McMurphy is committed. The length of time he spends in his hospital is entirely up to us” (157-158). The Big Nurse is only keeping McMurphy under her jurisdiction so that she can redeem herself, and come back full force, towards McMurphy. The more time that she has with McMurphy, the more likely she is to win the battle against
Nurse Ratched is portrayed as the authority figure in the hospital. The patients see no choice but to follow her regulations that she had laid down for them. Nurse Ratched's appearance is strong and cold. She has womanly features, but hides them “Her Face is smooth, calculated, and precision-made, like an expensive… A mistake was made somehow in manufacturing putting those big, womanly breasts on what would have otherwise been a prefect work, and you can see how bitter she is about it.” (11) She kept control over the ward without weakness, until McMurphy came. When McMurphy is introduced into the novel he is laughing a lot, and talking with the patients in the ward, he does not seem intimidated by Miss Ratched. McMurphy constantly challenges the control of Nurse Ratched, while she tries to show she remains in control, He succeeds in some ways and lo...
People often find themselves as part of a collective, following society's norms and may find oneself in places where feeling constrained by the rules and will act out to be unconstrained, as a result people are branded as nuisances or troublemakers. In the novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, the author Ken Kesey conveys the attempt McMurphy makes to live unconstrained by the authority of Nurse Ratched. The story is very one sided and helps create an understanding for those troublemakers who are look down on in hopes of shifting ingrained ideals. The Significance of McMurphy's struggles lies in the importance placed on individuality and liberty. If McMurphy had not opposed fear and autocratic authority of Nurse Ratched nothing would have gotten better on the ward the men would still feel fear. and unnerved by a possibility of freedom. “...Then, just as she's rolling along at her biggest and meanest, McMurphy steps out of the latrine ... holding that towel around his hips-stops her dead! ” In the novel McMurphy shows little signs like this to combat thee Nurse. His defiance of her system included
This also demonstrates how much power McMurphy has gained so far over Ms. Ratched. In the novel, Ms. Ratched tries to take away all of the power that McMurphy has gained over her by blaming McMurphy for making the lives of the hospital patients worse, and that McMurphy was the cause for the deaths of patients William Bibbit and Charles Cheswick. This angers McMurphy, and causes him to choke her with the intent to kill her, in the novel, Chief Bromden describes, “Only at the last---after he’d smashed through that glass door, her face swung around, with terror forever ruining any other look she might ever try to use again, screaming when he grabbed her and ripped her uniform all the way down the front.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey presents a situation which is a small scale and exaggerated model of modern society and its suppressive qualities. The story deals with the inmates of a psychiatric ward who are all under the control of Nurse Ratched, ‘Big Nurse’, whose name itself signifies the oppressive nature of her authority. She rules with an iron fist so that the ward can function smoothly in order to achieve the rehabilitation of patients with a variety of mental illnesses. Big Nurse is presented to the reader through the eyes of the Chief, the story’s narrator, and much of her control is represented through the Chief’s hallucinations. One of these most recurring elements is the fog, a metaphorical haze keeping the patients befuddled and controlled “The fog: then time doesn’t mean anything. It’s lost in the fog, like everyone else” (Kesey 69). Another element of her control is the wires, though the Chief only brings this u...
She controlled every movement and every person’s actions and thoughts. She made the doctors so miserable when they did not follow her instructions, that they begged to be transferred out if. “I'm disappointed in you. Even if one hadn't read his history all one should need to do is pay attention to his behavior on the ward to realize how absurd the suggestion is. This man is not only very very sick, but I believe he is definitely a Potential Assaultive” (). This quote from the book illustrated how Nurse Ratched controlled her ward. She manipulated people into siding with her regardless of whether it was the right decision. This was malpractice by Nurse Ratched because she did not allow the doctor, who was trained to diagnose patients, to do his job properly. Instead, she manipulated the doctor to diagnose the patients incorrectly in order to benefit her interests rather than those of the
Throughout the novel, women tend to be in control. “We are victims of a matriarchy here, my friend” Harding said. Harding tells McMurphy how the doctor is as helpless against anything as they are. He cannot fire or hire people or decide who gets to leave or stay. That decision is for the supervisor and she’s a woman, a good friend of Nurse Ratched, making the Big Nurse do anything she wants with them without the fear of losing her job. She uses rules she calls ‘ward policy’ to keep the patients in check. From listening to the same loud music
Nurse Ratched is the most daunting persona of the novel, due in large part to the use of her voice. Throughout the novel, both McMurphy and Nurse Ratched are continually trying to pull each other down. Nurse Ratched, using her dominant speaking skills, tries to prove to the patients that McMurphy is conning them with his vocalizations, “Look at some of these gifts, as devoted fans of his might call them. First, there was the gift of the tub. Was that actually his to give?
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a compelling tale that brings a warning of the results of an overly conformist and repressive institution. As the narrator of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Chief Bromden, a paranoid half- Native American Indian man, has managed to go unnoticed for ten years by pretending to be deaf and dumb as a patient at an Oregon mental asylum. While he towers at six feet seven inches tall, he has fear and paranoia that stem from what he refers to as The Combine: an assemblage whose goal is to force society into a conformist mold that fits civilization to its benefit. Nurse Ratched, a manipulative and impassive former army nurse, dominates the ward full of men, who are either deemed as Acute (curable), or Chronic (incurable). A new, criminally “insane” patient named Randle McMurphy, who was transferred from the Pendleton Work Farm, eventually despoils the institution’s mechanical and monotonous schedule through his gambling, womanizing, and rollicking behavior.
The novel, which takes place in an Oregon psychiatric hospital, centers around the conflict between manipulative Nurse Ratched and her patients. Randle McMurphy, a transfer from Pendleton Work Farm, becomes a champion for the men’s cause as he sets out to overthrow the dictator-like nurse. Initially, the reader may doubt the economic implications of the novel. Yet, if one looks closer at the numerous textual references to power, production, and profit, he or she will begin to interpret Cuckoo’s Nest in a
The author of One Flew over the Cuckoo 's Nest, allows the reader to explore different psychoanalytic issues in literature. The ability to use works literature to learn about real world conflicts allows us to use prior knowledge to interact with these problems in reality. Ken Kesey, the author of the above novel and Carl Jung, author of “The Archetype and the Collective Unconscious” wrote how the mind can be easily overtaken by many outside factors from the past or present. The novel takes place in an asylum that is aimed to contain individuals that have a mental issue or problem. The doctors and care takers are seen as tyrants and barriers that inhibit the patients to improve their health, while the patients are limited by their initial conditions