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Applying psychology to everyday life
Character analysis of nurse ratched
Applying psychology to everyday life
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Throughout One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Nurse Ratched maintains power of her patients, but she does so in a subtle way that could be difficult to interpret. She requires everyone in the mental hospital to follow her specific daily ritual and if they asked to change it, she would get somewhat verbally abusive and threaten them with a variety of punishments. In addition, she caused the patients to feel such intense fear when she was in their presence, which is surely dangerous to patients who already have mental difficulties. However, her mannerisms are not always the easiest to pick up and she pretends to be doing everything in the patients’ best interest. Nurse Ratched had such an incredible amount of power over everything that went on in the mental institution and since it seemed to operate smoothly on the surface, she never got in trouble for her terrible actions. For example, the patients only want to be able to watch a simple baseball game on TV, but that would disrupt her usual plans for the day. Therefore, she became angry with them and could not give them a logical reason for denying their request. Once the patients started rebelling against her, she started implementing harsh punishments, such as ECT. However, this should certainly not be used as a consequence for bad …show more content…
She harshly threatens to tell Billy’s mother about his actions, knowing that this would get him worked up, eventually causing him to commit suicide. Because of her actions, many other terrible events transpired inside the hospital, all because she thought she had the power to do as she pleased. Towards the end of the film, McMurphy acts out against her and tries to attack her. Because of this, she decided to give him a lobotomy unjustly and he was eventually smothered by Chief in a mercy killing. As shown in all her actions, Nurse Ratched truly abused her power in the institution and went too
In One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, role reversal puts a woman, Nurse Ratched, in control of the ward, which is important in creating a contrast to traditional power. Within the ward Ratched has ultimate power by “merely [insinuating]” (p. 63) a wrongdoing and has control of the doctors. Soon after the first confrontation with Randle McMurphy (Mack), her power is demonstrated through the submissive and obedient manners of all there (152). Ratched is shown as having great power within the ward and outside, despite that time periods constriction of being a women, showing an important contrast to traditional power structures.
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...
In the novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” the characters are in a mental hospital for various reasons. Narrated by Chief Bromden, a large Native American man, the story tells mainly of a newcomer to the hospital, Randle McMurphy, who is not actually mentally ill, but pretends to be to escape work detail. A much-feared middle-aged woman named Mildred Ratched runs the hospital. She runs the hospital like a concentration camp, with harsh rules, little change, and almost no medical oversight. The “prisoners” have a large amount of fear of Nurse Ratched, as she rules the place like she is a soulless dictator, the patients get no say in any decision made. This is exemplified when McMurphy brings up the World Series, and the patients take a vote on it. Though everyone wants to watch it, they have so much fear for Nurse Ratched that they are too afraid to speak out against her wishes.
He waltzed into the ward and introduced himself to every patient as a gambling man with a zest for women and cards. Randle P. McMurphy, a swaggering, gambling, boisterous redheaded con man, arrived at the ward from the Pendleton Work Farm. He was sentenced to six months at the prison work farm, but pretended to be insane in order to obtain a transfer to the hospital because he thought it would be more comfortable than the work farm. Bromden senses that there was something different about this new patient. After his first experience with the excruciating routine of the Group Meeting, McMurphy tells the patients that Nurse Ratchet is a genuine “ball-cutter.” The other patients tell him that there is no defying Nurse Ratched because, in their eyes, she is an all-powerful force. True to his nature as a gambling man, McMurphy makes a bet with the other patients that he can make Ratched lose her temper.
Mcmurphy's true character was lost in the writing of the screenplay, his. intelligence and cunning is lowered greatly by changes made by the screen. writers. The.. & nbsp; Ms. Ratched is a powerful woman in both the book and the movie. She knows how to play with people's minds and manipulate groups. She keeps a tight grip on the ward using subtle methods which cannot be ignored.
She determines when they take their medication and even tells them when they are able to bathe. Nurse Ratched takes control by taking away a man’s masculinity and making them feel small when they are there. She tells the patients that they aren’t real men and she treats them like they are children. The article “Fixing Men: Castration, Impotence, and Masculinity is Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” by Michael Meloy states, “Nurse Ratched—a sterile, distant, and oppressive feminine force who psychologically castrates the male patients” (3). Nurse Ratched is able to dominate every man in the ward because they are all afraid she will shame them and break them down in front of the other men on the ward and take away their character. Meloy proves this by explaining, “That to castrate a male is to take away the very essence of his being, or his ‘spirit’” (4). The men on the ward are afraid of what she might do or say to them if they go against
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.
In Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the reader has the experience to understand what it was like to live in an insane asylum during the 1960’s. Kesey shows the reader the world within the asylum of Portland Oregon and all the relationships and social standings that happen within it. The three major characters’ groups, Nurse Ratched, the Black Boys, and McMurphy show how their level of power effects how they are treated in the asylum. Nurse Ratched is the head of the ward and controls everything that goes on in it, as she has the highest authority in the ward and sabotages the patients with her daily rules and rituals. These rituals include her servants, the Black Boys, doing anything she tells them to do with the patients.
In the end, they believe they have control over the other, but they do not realize that they both have lost control until it is too late. They both pay a harsh penalty for their struggle to gain control over the ward. Nurse Ratched forever loses her precious power status and authority over the institution, while McMurphy loses the friends he tired to help, his personality, and eventually his life. Throughout the novel, these two characters relentlessly fight to control each other. They both realize that control can never be absolute.
The nurse-patient relationship is one that is built on a mutual trust and respect that fosters hope and assists in a harmonious healing process. A nurse has the professional duty to the patient to provide physical, emotional, and spiritual care to avoid injury. Any negligence in rendering care to the patient is direct disregard and results in malpractice. This is the crux of the problem with Nurse Ratched. In One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Nurse Ratched is guilty of malpractice due to the cruel medical treatments she practiced, mental anguish inflicted by her on the patients, as well as the undue authority she had in the hospital that she consistently misused.
Nurse Ratched gains much of her power through the manipulation of the patients on the
Through McMurphy’s attempt to lift the control panel in the tub room, Kesey is demonstrating one’s need to do the . During his attempt, McMurphy reliazes that the control panel would be impossible to lift; however, he tried despite the impending failure. Even though he might not have achieved his goal, he had the courgae to try. Currently, the entire ward is too afraid to try to fight for their rights. They live under the control of Nurse Ratched. Her “sure power that extends in all directions on hairlike wires” reassures her that she has absolute control over the entire ward (Kesey 29). The patients are too afraid of her control to fight for their rights. This mental hospital is depicted to run more like a prison. “The flock
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.
Nurse Ratched first started with Bibbits experience with his mother and progressed by Harding's relationships being brought up at the group meetings and forcing them to reveal their secrets. Nurse Ratched uses sex to make the men feel inferior and inadequate. This also occurred when Bibbit decided to commit suicide in defiance of Nurse Ratched authority. Nurse Ratched falls into a sexually powerful woman who dismisses traditional notions of femininity by running the ward. Throughout the novel she is described using images as machines like in the quote “She blows up bigger and bigger, big as a tractor, so big I can smell the machinery inside the way you smell a motor pulling too big a load” (Kesey 5), to further disconnect her from the traditional feminine role that ultimately firm unbalanced gender roles. The women there is determined and powerful weather in society the men would be considered powerful. Nurse Ratched and McMurphy sexual domination end up turning sex into a weapon between them, violence itself because of an act of sex.