Kesey also creates irony in allowing the mentally ill to eventually take control from the mentally sound. The hospital ward is a microcosm for American society where a leading body dictates what is sane and attempts to control the rest of society. Nurse Ratched and her staff represent the government, while the patients are those who live under the rule of said government. Although the patients comply the rules they are subject to, some key details suggest that they could take back control for themselves
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
Nurse Ratched represents the dictatorial dehumanization, emasculation, and mechanization of society or, in Chief Bromden’s words, the “Combine”. The narrator, Chief Bromden, states that nurse Ratched comes into the ward with tools such as “wheels and gears, cogs polished to a hard glitter, tiny pills that gleam like porcelain, needles, forceps, watchmaker 's pliers, rolls of copper wire…” (P.4) with the intention of adjusting and fixing what society thinks is broken. Nurse Ratched’s name, similar
The majority of the female characters in the novel are portrayed as the antagonists, with the exception of the prostitutes, and could be labelled as having ‘emasculating female authority’. Feminists would argue that Ken Kesey’s portrayal of Nurse Ratched in particular is misogynistic and critics would question why the character is negatively portrayed despite her role as an authority figure in helping patients and keeping order. This negative portrayal of women with power and authority may mirror
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
The lengths in which Nurse Ratched will go to resume power are astounding. So when this position of power is threatened by a confident young man named McMurphy, the struggle for power escalates to epic proportions. To an unbiased witness, one would call her persistence in defying the wishes of McMurphy and assuming her position, as obsessive. Ken Kesey, author of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", uses power to symbolize how crucial power is to a person's personality. This idea is enhanced through
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. At first, the confrontation between Ratched and McMurphy provides some humorous entertainment for the other patients. However,
win can be a very powerful thing. As demonstrated through Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Nurse Ratched and McMurphy are in constant war for this power over the patients of the ward. McMurphy attempts to give the patients more confidence while Nurse Ratched attempts to keeps things the way they were before he ever showed up. McMurphy’s constant rule breaking has caused Nurse Ratched to slowly break down and lose control over the patients which has declared him as the winner of the war
mentally ill. He is unaware that he will be supervised by an emasculating woman named Nurse Mildred Ratched who watches the patients’ every motion from her nurse’s station. R.P. McMurphy is a lively, rebellious, and rational patient that has recently been escorted into the insane asylum. Once in the bin, Randle becomes the self-proclaimed champion of the rights of the other ward patients, his adversary being Nurse Ratched (New York Times). He scrutinizes the asylum and the patients deciding that he needs
similar to the way she would do them. She refuses to take this fall from grace, and uses her silence as assertion in the group meeting. The staff decides McMurphy’s behavior is unacceptable and decides he must be moved to solitary confinement; however, Ratched surprisingly disagrees, and decides personally to take her time and play a sort of cat and mouse game with McMurphy. She gives him the job of cleaning the bathrooms, but he keeps badgering her, amazing Bromden at his willfulness. The patients take
encounter characters who stand up for what they think is right. These characters go against the majority to fight for morality. In the play “Wit” by Margaret Edson, the character that meets these characteristics the most is Susie Monahan, Vivian’s main Nurse. At the end of the play Susie fights for Vivian’s rights, so the doctors can respect Vivian’s decision, the purpose of Susie’s role is to morally support Vivian, and she achieves it until the end . On the other hand,on Henrik Ibsens “An Enemy of the
The antagonist Nurse Ratched is the id in the novel. In the text, “"What worries me, Billy," she said—I could hear the change in her voice—"is how your poor mother is going to take this. She got the response she was after. Billy flinched and put his hand to his cheek like he'd been burned with acid. Mrs. Bibbit's always been so proud of your discretion. I know she has. This is going to disturb her terribly. You know how she is when she gets disturbed, Billy; you know how ill the poor woman can become
because their lives were “normal” and routine. Their daily routine guided them through a series of happenings, which were both comfortable and tolerable to them, even though as a result of this they would remain subject to the manipulative ways of Nurse Ratchet. These people would say that the “oppressive society” that they lived in may not suit everyone, but certainly suited them. McMurphy, on the other hand, finds this setting to be suitable for no human being, and soon after arriving he sets the
Discuss the control devices used by Big Nurse on the ward and by the Combine in general. Within the novel ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,’ Nurse Ratched (the Big Nurse) uses various control devices as to maintain order in the ward. Nurse Ratched has created her society through the utilization of manipulation; this done most obviously through the logbook, which is dedicated wholly to patients documenting their peer’s secrets. Through this, the Big Nurse instils fear and distrust within the men
Just like the high, middle, and low class of modern society, a similar version parallels this theory throughout the book. Nurse Ratched ranks as the most powerful followed by the black boys and Doctor Spivey who are under her complete control. Next, comes the low class patients. Acutes seem functional and unbelonging while chronics seem disabled and outcasted. The nurse holds a strong ground over both doctors and patients, “Those are the rules we play by. Of course, she always wins my friend,
Daniel J. Vitkus argues the power struggle between McMurphy and the ‘Big Nurse’ (Nurse Ratched) is a ‘sexual battle’ of masculinity versus femininity, each thriving for power over the other. The Nurse asserts the ‘sexual battle’ by castrating the patients who resist her authority. Hence, the women on ward are labelled ‘ball-cutters’ emasculating the patients of their manhood and their natural superiority which was assumed during the 1960s. Thus, McMurphy triumphs in attaining sexual freedom for
disease. This correlates to Ratched because she infects the hospital's nurses, patients, and others with her irrational desire for order. Nurse Ratched's name and characteristics also resemble those of a Judas and a Pontius Pilate. This concept is built upon by Van when he states, "Both the movie and the novel make Ratched a Judas and a Pontius Pilate who leads an obnoxious male messiah to the lobotomy table" (Van 13). Both of these men mistreated Jesus, just as Nurse Ratched mistreated and harmed her
main characters; R.P. McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) and nurse Mildred Ratched (Louise Fletcher). Throughout the film, director Forman uses aesthetic techniques, as well as sound and colour to help position the audience how he wants. The film is essentially about R.P McMurphy getting transferred to a mental institution from a prison farm from evaluation. He assumes it will be a less restrictive environment; unfortunately for McMurphy, nurse Ratched runs the psychiatric ward with an iron fist. Keeping
are Nurse Ratched in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Lady Macbeth in William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Macbeth. Ken Kesey wrote his novel in 1962, and Shakespeare years before that, years before women in society were seen as equals, much less considered to be powerful figure. Yet, both Nurse Ratched and Lady Macbeth are very powerful, domineering female figures who control men by manipulating them and maintaining a deceiving innocent appearance. However, while
Nurse Ratched and Hester are characterized by the views of others and their relationships with them. Much of who the Big Nurse depends on Chief Bromden’s narration and the opinions expressed by the other patients. Randall McMurphy, the rebellious new admission patient, argues right away that Ratched is something other than what other patients had previously thought. He claims that she falls into the category of “people who try to make you weak so they can get you to toe the line, to follow their