In Ken Kesey’s novel, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, he engages the reader with Nurse Ratched’s obsession with power, especially against McMurphy. When Nurse Ratched faces multiple altercations with McMurphy, she believes that her significant power is in jeopardy. This commences a battle for power in the ward between these characters. One assumes that the Nurses’ meticulous tendency in the ward is for the benefit of the patients. However, this is simply not the case. The manipulative nurse is unfamiliar with losing control of the ward. Moreover, she is rabid when it comes to sharing her power with anyone, especially McMurphy. Nurse Ratched is overly ambitious when it comes to being in charge, leaving the reader with a poor impression of …show more content…
The novel is narrated by the main character, Chief Bromden, who reveals the two faces of Nurse Ratched, in the opening pages of the novel. He continues sweeping the floor while the nurse assaults three black aides for gossiping in the hallway. Chief chooses to describe the nurse abstractly: “her painted smile twists, stretches to an open snarl, and she blows up bigger and bigger...by the time the patients get there...all they see is the head nurse, smiling and calm and cold as usual” (5). Nurse Ratched runs the psychiatric ward with precision and harsh discipline. When Randle McMurphy arrives to escape time in jail, he immediately sizes the Big Nurse up as manipulative, controlling, and power-hungry. The portrayal that he expresses to the patient's leaves a lasting impact on them: “The flock gets sight of a spot of blood on some chicken and all go to peckin’ at it, see, till they rip the chicken to shreds, blood and bones and feathers” (57). McMurphy finds it appalling that the patients are too blindsided to see Nurse Ratched’s conniving scheme, which is to take charge of the patients’ lives. The only person who understands Nurse Ratched’s game is McMurphy, and this motivates him to rebel against the …show more content…
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
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.
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.
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...
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
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.
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.
McMurphy has figuratively disrobed Nurse Ratched, disempowering her and because she has been exposed as human. Her power over the men is further broken, despite her clear victory over McMurphy as an individual. "Thoughts are free," but if part of one's brain has been removed, one does not even have much in the way of thoughts. Ratched has been stripped of much of her authority, her credibility in the overall institution has been further eroded, and Bromden finally gains the independence to escape.
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.
The majority of the patients have resided in the ward for a long period of time, which causes them to constantly be in the range of Nurse Ratched’s control. Throughout their time there, she observes them, taking note of any distinctions about their personalities. After a certain time span, she is able to learn each of their weaknesses and use them in her own favor. She manipulates them to the point where the patients begin to voluntarily believe that everything done at the ward “is done solely for therapeutic reasons” and for their “own benefit” (Kesey58). The patients take pride in the treatments and service that they go through. They do not realize Ratched’s hidden intentions, which is to achieve unwavering loyalty. This, in turn, prevents
In the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the author Ken Kesey 1.enthralls the reader’s attention by displaying events of 2.diminished 3.humanity all throughout the book. This book revolves around the idea that women may be a threat to the masculinity of mental ward patients.The 4.diverse types of minority groups become 5.conspicuous as the author reveals the 6.inclement and sadistic character, Nurse Ratched, the stories antagonist, , who runs the ward with morbid intentions to desiccate the courage of the people around her. The power in which she portrays is ample to the point it becomes flagrant. Her choice of words and
During the sessions the Nurse runs, where all the men blurt out embarrassing things about themselves or others, this is torture for the patients. “Her eyes clicked to the next man; each one jumped like a shooting gallery target”(71). The men are afraid of her, so much so that they don’t even ask to vote on things that they want in fear of getting the electro shock therapy or even worse, the lobotomy. She uses this, plus her threat of never letting them out of the ward and telling them that they wouldn’t make it in the real world, manipulatively, making her system a corrupt one, the same one that Robin Hood was fighting against. The Sheriff in his tale was constantly working directly with the kings of the land to keep the poor people poor and stupid and the nobles in charge. And as Harding States, Nurse Ratched isn’t on the top, she’s purely just a worker in the Combine. But, just like Sheriff Nottingham, Nurse Ratched can be outsmarted by those fighting the system. “You know ma’am… this is the exact thing somebody always tells me about the rules… just when they figure out I’m about to do the dead opposite”(23). McMurphy then goes on to commit several shenanigans between the World Series game, the whore and the fishing trip, breaking the glass, constantly establishing that she isn’t as powerful as she thinks she
Her portrayal is vital for the plot of this book. She is generally the opposite of a stereotypical woman who is supposed to submissive, caring and motherly. Normally a female character with power is viewed as powerful or inspiring but Miss Ratched does not have that effect. Literary critic Manuel Muñoz further describes her, “The novel swiftly renders Nurse Ratched not as a powerful woman, but more as a networked monster.” (669). The way she acts is all calculated like she can predict the future of each patients. She can twist even the most motivated and rebellious mind in the asylum, McMurphy, into her control. Her planned actions through letting the men win some battles ultimately lead to her victory of destroying McMurphy. Miss Ratched knows that she will always win. This is shown in her meeting with the other members, “‘No. I don’t agree. Not at all.’ She smiles around at all of the. ‘I don’t agree that he should be sent up to Disturbed,” She nonchalantly smiles and shuts down all of the other members worries of this new patient. She sees him as a new challenge for her and controlling him will be fun. Her current patients are the one most needed of care to improve their situation. Her unmotherly actions is the opposite of what her jobs is asking for. Manuel Muñoz states, “Part of Nurse Ratched’s magnetic presence in this novel is her mystery, her existence in the world as a person willing to display a coldly
Through the use of feminine and masculine symbols, Kesey explores the masculinity versus femininity and the civilising influences that it has on the patients of the ward. Ratched a former army nurse, represents ‘The Combine’, the oppressive mechanization, dehumanization, and emasculation of modern society where the women are portrayed as ‘wolves’, ‘sly and elusive’ whilst the men as the ‘frightened rabbits’ their prey. Although known to show her ‘hideous self’ in front of the Bromden and the aides, the ‘Big Nurse’ is able to regain her doll-like composure and mask her humanity and femininity behind a devilishly manipulative and patronising façade in front of the patients. This parallels oppressive forces in society who gain superiority through