Nurse Ratched In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Nurse Ratched is the villain, the antagonist of the novel. She is a scheming, evil manipulating character and ends the same nasty women, though she lost her power and is small in the patient’s eyes. Chief often describes her as a doll on the outside, but a machine underneath saying her expressions are always "calculated and mechanical."(p.48). Chief having been under her rule for 10 years, says Ratched, "tends to get real put out if something keeps her outfit from running like a smooth, accurate, precision-made machine. The slightest thing messy or out of kilter or in the way ties her into a little white knot of tight-smiled fury."(p.30). She rules over her ward with an iron hand and hides her humanity and femininity behind a stiff, scornful front. She hand-picks her staff for their submissiveness, disposing of the other through mental intimidation, leaving her in complete control of her ward. She renders her patients incapable through a psychologically manipulative program aimed to destroy any self-esteem they have. Her ways slowly drain all traces of humanity from her patients. McMurphy refers to her as a “ball-cutter”(p.61). expressing her ability to emasculate

the men and make the believe that they are less than human.
Nurse Ratched symbolizes the oppressive mechanical, dehumanized, and emasculated tendencies of modern society, what Bromden describes as the Combine.

She is in complete control of the ward and everyone on it, she rules with a cold, tyrannical hand. Her ultimate control over her own emotions, aid to her robotic presence. Even her name has a metal-like sound, being very similar to “ratchet”. In the first few pages Ratched’s shows her “hideous self”(p.5) but she is able to hide it before any of the other patients notice, this personal control represents how society gains through the deceit of the ones in power; because the ones being deceived are unaware of the injustice. When McMurphy rips her shirt open at the end of the novel, he symbolically exposes her hypocrisy and deceit,as well as that of

society.
Nurse Ratched supreme rule over the ward is demolished by R.P McMurphy. She was described as a figure that could never lose because “She doesn't lose one her losses, but she wins on ours”(p.100). To the ward she was a giant, an un-movable figure to fear, but McMurphy challenges this concept and everything she is. He bets the men in the ward that he could win against her, and succeeds in the end. McMurphy’s realizes her weakness and attackers, her with it; her weakness being sexuality. One of the first confrontations they have McMurphy is running around the ward in a towel and flaunts it to her, leaving her disheveled and unable to handle the situation with her cold robot facade. Through the novel McMurphy wins more and more arguments until finally he attacker her ripping her blouse and finally ending her reign of terror by exposing her bosom, that she tries so hard to hide.