Power Dynamics in 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest'

The novel One Flew over the Cuckoo’s nest by Ken Kesey depicts the ongoing war between the authoritative head nurse, Miss Ratched, and the cowardly patients in the psychiatric ward. This battle between staff and patients begins when Mcmurphy, a ………, is transferred to this mental asylum. He challenges Miss Ratched’s power and hardily reveals her intentions to the rest of the ward patients. Billy Bibbit, Harding, and Chief are some of the main patients in the story who are subject to her cruel and deceptive system. Nurse Ratched’s emasculates the patients in the ward by skill of manipulation in order to maintain control and power over the ward, yet her dominance is eventually defeated.
One of Miss ratched’s techniques in keeping the ward in order

During group meetings, it is her goal to get the patients to reveal their not so clean past. While Chief is in one of these meetings, he reveals a memory from 4-5 years back in which Miss Ratched succeeds in getting the patients to do exactly what she wants She first blatantly asks the patients to let out their secrets but everyone continues to sit there silently. She then says, “am I to take it that there’s not a man among you that has committed some act that he has never admitted? Must we go over past history? (50). This instantly triggers the patients and they began to pour out all of their deepest and darkest secrets. However, they soon become extremely ashamed of themselves and the confessions they had just revealed. Mcmurphy notices Miss Ratched’s manipulative tendencies in one of these group meetings regarding Harding and his marriage complications. Miss Ratched starts discussing Harding’s problems and reads the log book out loud for the rest of the patients to hear, encouraging them to touch upon the subject. Chief reveals that “they’ve been maneuvered again into grilling one of their friends like he was a criminal and they were all prosecutors and judge and

Although she is obviously in disbelief, Billy seems rather proud of his first sexual encounter with a woman. As soon as this became apparent to Miss ratched, she began to mention how disappointed Billy’s mother will be when she hears what her son did. She says, “what worries me, Billy, -- is how your poor mother is going to take this” (315). She also states, “this is going to disturb her terribly. You know how she is when she gets disturbed”(315). Billy instantly becomes caught in her trap and begins to stutter, begging her not to tell his mother but Miss Ratched insisted that she must be informed. He continues to rat out Mcmurphy and Harding and states that they teased him into having sex with the woman. Miss Ratched then comforts Billy and takes him to the doctor’s office and tells the doctor that “he needs a lot of sympathy” because “he is in a pitiful state.” (317) Miss Ratched regains control of Billy by mentioning his mother because she knows of his underlying fear of the mother. Although it is completely normal for men to want sex, Miss Ratched makes him feel ashamed for the “sin” he had just committed to evidently secure her dominance of the