Maintaining the Matriarch Quest. A long or arduous search for something. The word quest has many positive connotations. Heroes go on quests to save the pretty girl, find the holy grail, or find themselves in some way. More often than not, people do not consider the villains as being on a quest, but they often are. The “bad guys” are searching too, just not necessarily for the right things. In the novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey, the antagonist, Nurse Ratched, is on a quest, because she needs to maintain power in the matriarchy at the mental hospital, by structuring herself high-up in the ward, staying calm in the face of uprise, and using fear as a crutch for the patients. When first seeing Nurse Ratched in the novel, Chief Bromden describes her power and her influence on the ward, stating, “she wields a sure power that extends in all directions” (Kesey 30). She has manipulated the system to place herself in the highest position and to insure she will not be receiving uprise from them. Over the years, many doctors with plans and ideas have come and go-- retreating from her “dry-ice eyes, day in, day out” (Kesey 31). Finally, after years of strong-minded doctors, Nurse Ratched finds the perfect, push-over doctor, and she keeps him; she does not know that this weak doctor will …show more content…
Ruckly, a patient on the ward, was “being a holy nuisance all over the place,” which caused the doctors to operate on him-- the operation didn’t go according to plan. This is perfect foreshadowing of how Nurse Ratched plans to use McMurphy in the end. McMurphy loses it, and that gives Big Nurse the opportunity to play the last card: a lobotomy. She plans to use McMurphy as an example, to set fear into the other patients, just like Ruckly. Her plan is thwarted by Chief Bromden, and her plan is not followed through. Fear, throughout the novel, was a huge factor in Nurse Ratched’s
In the book, The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver, the notion of a quest is very prevalent. According to Thomas Foster, a Quest consists of five things a quester, a place to go, a reason to go there, challenges and trials, and an actual purpose (Foster). Taylor Greer’s journey in The Bean Trees embodies Foster’s ideals through which she gains self-knowledge, learns to thrive and finds her place in the world.
...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.
From the moment McMurphy enters the ward it is clear to all that he is different and hard to control. He’s seen as a figure the rest of the patients can look up to and he raises their hopes in taking back power from the big nurse. The other patients identify McMurphy as a leader when he first stands up to the nurse at her group therapy, saying that she has manipulated them all to become “a bunch of chickens at a pecking party”(Kesey 55). He tells the patients that they do not have to listen to Nurse Ratched and he confronts her tactics and motives. The patients see him as a leader at this point, but McMurphy does not see the need for him to be leading alone. McMurphy is a strong willed and opinionated man, so when he arrives at the ward he fails to comprehend why the men live in fear, until Harding explains it to him by
He would always sneak in wine, gamble with them, and would have them play along on all his jokes. His need for freedom was refreshing to everyone else, that what kept them going. At points when he gave up from being a rebel, other patients gave up. McMurphy wins this war between him and Ratched because he helps other patients continue to be excited and helps them get out of there. McMurphy influences patients to stand up for themselves and not take orders from Ratched. Harding listened to McMurphy and did exactly that. He started to call her out on things and make fun of her, and she couldn't respond. It was clear that Nurse Ratched wasn't the same person and because of what McMurphy did, she couldn't get back in control. Ken Kesey writes, “She tried to get her ward back into shape, but it was difficult with McMurphy’s presence still tromping up and down the halls and laughing out loud in the meetings… she couldn't rule with her old power anymore… She was losing her patients one after the other” ( 320-321). McMurphy has always taught them to follow their own rules and not obey Ratched. In particular, he influenced Chief, a quiet patient that watches his surrounding carefully. After teaching Chief what it's like to follow your own rules, Chief begins to follow McMurphy’s role. After the incident of stripping Ratched’s identity, he learns that McMurphy was a hero to him and although he doesn’t physically help him out, McMurphy has taught Chief how to play this game. Chief tries to be like McMurphy by taking over. DOing so he tries on his cap, trying to be the new McMurphy. Ken Kesey writes, “I reached into McMurphy’s nightstand and got his cap and tried it on. It was too small” (323). Chief realized that no one could take over McMurphy's role, but that Chief would have to be in control over himself to make a statement. Chief does exactly that, he runs for it, making him happier than he has ever
In the story, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey places racial groups into a social hierarchy in the Combine in order to empathize with these minority groups and reveal the stereotyping that society perpetrates. Throughout the story, these minority groups such as the black orderlies, Turkle, and Chief Bromden are placed on a lower social level than the other characters in the story so that Kesey can justify his use of racism.
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...
When someone hears the word quest, their mind automatically goes to a mythical land of dragons and knights in shining armor. However, Thomas Foster’s book How to Read Literature Like a Professor states that this shouldn’t always be the case. In Chapter One: Every Trip Is a Quest, Foster claims that a quest in literature can take place in any time period and can be as mundane as grocery shopping. In order to classify an event as quest, it needs to follow certain criteria. There needs to be “a quester, a place to go, a stated reason to go there, challenges and trials en route, and a real reason to go there” (Foster, 3). Furthermore, considering the definition of a quest by Thomas Foster, it is clear that the novel, The Secret Life of Bees, fits
Initially the ward is run as if it was a prison ward, but from the moment the brawling, gambling McMurphy sets foot on the ward it is identified that he is going to cause havoc and provide change for the patients. McMurphy becomes a leader, a Christ like figure and the other patients are his disciples. The person who is objective to listen to his teachings at first is Chief Bromden (often called Bromden), but then he realizes that he is there to save them and joins McMurphy and the Acutes (meaning that they have possibility for rehabilitation and release) in the protest against Nurse Ratched, a bureaucratic woman who is the protagonist of the story, and the `Combine' (or society).
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.
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
“Power comes from temperament but enthusiasm kills the switch”. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken kesey reveals how the struggle for power and authority is shown in the psychiatric hospital. Ken kesey expresses this mastery through Nurse Ratched and McMurphy and their effect on the patients in the ward. Nurse Ratched has all the power due to her technically being in charge of the ward. The patients “men” are powerless with their acceptance and obedience to her actions. However, everything changes when McMurphy arrives. His confidence and charisma give him some type of power that challenges and disrupts the Nurse’s drunkening thirst for power. Power in this novel is lost, gained and repossessed.
As he tries to conform to the ways of the hospital, he actually becomes more like the patients that he detests. In one last attempt to escape from the hospital, McMurphy uses his cunning wit and skills as a con man to persuade the orderly into opening a window to allow two women into the ward. As the nigh progresses and he has the perfect opportunity to flee he realizes the hospital is the only safe place to stay. Due to Randal McMurphy rebellious ways and non-conformist ideas, the hospital performs a lobotomy, which during the time of this movie, w...
Nurse Ratched gains much of her power through the manipulation of the patients on the
There were no heroes on the psychiatric ward until McMurphy's arrival. McMurphy gave the patients courage to stand against a truncated concept of masculinity, such as Nurse Ratched. For example, Harding states, "No ones ever dared to come out and say it before, but there is not a man among us that does not think it. That doesn't feel just as you do about her, and the whole business feels it somewhere down deep in his sacred little soul." McMurphy did not only understand his friends/patients, but understood the enemy who portrayed evil, spite, and hatred. McMurphy is the only one who can stand against the Big Nurse's oppressive supreme power. Chief explains this by stating, "To beat her you don't have to whip her two out of three or three out of five, but every time you meet. As soon as you let down your guard, as sson as you loose once, she's won for good. And eventually we all got to lose. Nobody can help that." McMuprhy's struggle for hte patient's free will is a disruption to Nurse Ratched's social order. Though she holds down her guard she yet is incapable of controlling what McMurphy is incontrollable of , such as his friends well being, to the order of Nurse Ratched and the Combine.