Fahrenheit 451 Chief Bromden

The oppressor, or antagonist, of the story is Nurse Ratched, or the Big Nurse. Her methods of oppression, including attempts to emasculating the men in the medical ward, is the foundation of the work. The nurse uses her power to manipulate the patients as well as members of the staff in the hospital. Since she is in charge of the entire ward, she runs it with an iron fist while concealing her feminism and humanity behind a patronizing façade. As the story progresses, Nurse Ratched loses some power over the patients with the introduction of a new patient on the ward, Randle McMurphy. As McMurphy continues to fight her oppression, her façade breaks down and falls apart as she loses control.

Nurse Ratched, the ward supervisor, personifies the forces that seek to control the individual by subduing their right to think and act for themselves. She acts as a dictator who is constantly manipulating her patients to gain an advantage over them. Because Nurse Ratched supervises a mental hospital, she is expected to tell her patients what to do, but “the novel suggests that Nurse Ratched goes beyond mere supervision and instead seeks to rule all elements of the patients lives” (“Oppression in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest”). Nurse Ratched and her staff dehumanize the patients, and this eventually causes the patients to become broken inside.

Regarding Miss Ratched, she seems to show signs of passive-aggressive behavior throughout the book. This behavior adds to her manipulative ways and contributed to the decrease of the patients’ progress (mental/physical state). Passive-aggressive behavior is used to maintain control and power because it’s a way for her to not display any signs of weakness. Miss Ratched, also known as the Big Nurse to the patients, fights hard to remain as the top authority figure in the Ward due to her thirst for power. To maintain the control over the men, she emasculates them, stripping them of their masculinity, in various ways to prevent the chance of an uproar against her. For instance, after a group meeting regarding Harding’s problem with his wife’s breasts, the patients attack Harding. In response, McMurphy provides an analogy of a pecking party to the current

Nurse Ratched’s pretense was the hardest one to identify. We see her as the head nurse in the institution and controls every worker and patient in it. Her desire is that things go her way and only her way and has complete power, and runs the institute more of a dictatorship. We all see Nurses universally as good people that help others in need. But I think that Nurse Ratched did more bad than

Nurse Ratched and Big Brother have many similarities in their deeds - they are able to constantly monitor others and execute their powers. The actions of the nurse towards her patients are crude and inhumane. The big difference, however, between these two leaders lie in the achieving of their goals. While Big Brother manages to get his aims realized, Nurse Ratched is deprived of it, by the brave actions of the patients. The patients try to deprive her of feeling of being a dominant dictator. Both, Big Brother and Nurse Ratched seem to be powerful leaders, and integral part of a system, their unconditional control causes a negative impact on a person’s mind.

He, obviously, is the narrator, and the person whom we see the story through. He gives us his opinions on the matters at hand, and we see the book through his viewpoint. The traits described above allow him to be such a great narrator, for he can get people to confide in him, and relay this information to the reader.

It is with this paranoid rambling that the reader meets Bromden. As the first chapter progresses we witness more instances of his troubled mind and his way of describing people as part machine, part human. Nurse Ratched is the called "the Big Nurse," by Bromden. His description of her is an example of his ability to link people with machines. "She slides through the door with a gust of cold...(the) tip of each finger the same color as her lips. Funny orange. Like the tip of a soldering iron. Color so hot or so cold if she touches you with it you can't tell which." (Pg. 4 Kesey). She has the ability, in Bromden's mind, to increase her size. She, "blows up bigger and bigger, big as a tractor, so big you can smell the machinery inside the way you smell a motor pulling too big a load." (Pg 5 Kesey). These descriptions of humans who are made part machine, part human allow the reader to get a clearer understanding of Bromden's illness. This, I believe, is a positive aspect of the novel, however there would seem to be, at least one, negative aspect to Kesey's choice of narrators.

Nurse Ratched is the Head Nurse in the mental hospital and uses the policy and her own authority in order to take advantage of the frail condition that the patients are in. She feeds off their pain and suffering. Nurse Ratched is often referred to as the Big Nurse;

Setting is also important, as it refers to the period this book was set in, the 1950's. Ultimately, it is a reflection of what was happening in American society at the time, and what American society expected from each other. McCarthyism, as started by Senator Joseph McCarthy, was the most prevalent movement of the 1950's, where there was great momentum for anti-communism and the suppression of the Anti-communist party. Freedom of speech was suppressed, just like speech and actions were inside the hospital. Here, the Combine and Nurse Ratched act like the McCarthy "representatives", where the patients are seen as members of the public, having their every word and movement under close scrutiny.

   The choice that a novelist makes in deciding the point of view for a novel is hardly a minor one. Few authors make the decision to use first person narration by secondary character as Ken Kesey does in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.  By choosing Bromden as narrator instead of the central character of Randle Patrick McMurphy, Kesey gives us narration that is objective, that is to say from the outside of the central character, and also narration that is subjective and understandably unreliable. The paranoia and dementia that fill Bromden's narration set a tone for the struggle for liberation that is the theme of the story. It is also this choice of narrator that leads

Nurse Ratched confirms to the reader that she is infect insane by reacting in the way she did when the boys were enjoying themselves, being compared to Hitler, and her being heartless towards a young man who is suicidal, proving to the readers that she

This quote shows how Nurse Ratched is reminding the patients that they all have a mental illness and they are not “normal” people. A lot of the patients begin to question the ruling of Nurse Ratched. When they speak up about how they feel, she implies that they are rules for therapeutic reasons. She wants them to follow the orders and not question her command in the ward. The nurse makes the patients feel worthless and hopeless, which is a

Nurse Ratched is a former army nurse who works in the ward, she has manipulates the men in many ways. One way is having the patients “spy on each other” making them write things down, they think she would want to hear, or know. Bromden described Nurse Ratched as having the ability to “set the wall clock to whatever speed she wants”, a metaphor for her control, showing how the patients lose track of

War II, in order to maintain an illusion. The manipulation used by Nurse Ratched and

There are many situations in which Nurse Ratched exhibits control over her patients, by treating them as subordinates, humiliating them and de-masculinizing them without concern for their well-being. She uses control to withhold simple privileges, such as being able to watch a baseball game on the television, tub privileges and their right to have possession of cigarettes. It seems she actually derives satisfaction from this through hints of smiles, which are so seldom seen. This only brings about anger and hostility in the patients because of the way she treats them: like children instead of men. This is put best when one patient, Charlie Cheswick (Sydney Lassick) says, “Rules? Piss on your fucking rules, Miss Ratched! ... I ain’t no little kid! When you’re gonna have cigarettes kept from me like