One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest Character Analysis

Every work of literature – whether long, short, humorous, or frightening – enables all readers to experience a certain set of emotions from the passages within the text; but what do these emotions imply? In How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Thomas C. Foster clarifies that these reactions closely associate with symbolic meanings. He specifies how “every reader’s experience of a work is unique” in order to explain that almost everything stands as a symbol and carries various ideas – depending on the reader’s emotional interpretation (Foster 110). Foster also mentions the concept of intertextuality in which pure originality is impossible, thus resulting with authors influencing one another. Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest stands

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.

Hospitals are meant to help some people heal physically and others mentally. In the novel One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey published in 1962, readers are introduced to a mental hospital that has goals that do not align with helping people. Within the hospital, characters with varied personalities and opinions are intermixed with three main characters playing specific roles with supporting characters close by. With the characters’ motivations, themes develop such as the emasculation of the men in the hospital by an oppressive nurse. Symbols, such as laughter and the “combine”, are also pertinent to themes as the readers watch the men transitioning from being oppressed to being able to stand up for themselves causing change in hospital policy.

In Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a power play is presented between an unsuspected hero and a ruthless and control obsessed nurse in a mental hospital. The tragic ending makes the reader ponder if the selfless, and sacrificial hero, McMurphy, truly wins against the evil Nurse Ratched. Although Nurse Ratched is a powerful and unyielding force against the boys, good ultimately triumphs over evil because McMurphy shows the patients their own power and how they can stand up for themselves, sacrificing himself to save the others.

In the first excerpt of the novel, power is dominated by Nurse Ratched, a former military nurse who has a strong hunger for power. Her work place and the setting for the book takes place in the mental ward. The ward is initially portrayed as a society to help patients, but in reality the nurse manipulates patients and breaks them down mentally. Patients are shaved daily,

The patients in the mental ward are the only ones who ever work on cleaning the hospital. The labor in addition to controlling the patients keeps the staff complacent. This complacency forces the staff to follow Rached's orders.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a novel written by Ken Kesey during a time in our society when pressures of our modern world seemed at their greatest. Many people were, at this time, deemed by society’s standards to be insane and institutionalized. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is set in a ward of a mental institution. The major conflict in the novel is that of power. Power is a recurring and overwhelming theme throughout the novel. Kesey shows the power of women who are associated with the patients, the power Nurse Ratched has, and also the power McMurphy fights to win. By default, he also shows how little power the patients have.

Both Taber and the men view Nurse Ratched as a counselor of their decisions, a mother. In fact, he tells the others, “This is Miss Ratched. I chose this ward because it’s her ward. She’s, girls, just like a mother. Not that I mean age but you girls understand” (37). The way that Nurse Ratched’s ward functions is by her manipulation of the men through the use of pills and lobotomy as demonstrated on Taber. Thus, why he was dismissed, the men are set up to believe in conforming or are dehumanized enough to conform to Nurse Ratched’s authority in order to be prepared for the real world. However, Taber previously rejected her pills, “He still isn’t ready to swallow some-thing, he don’t know what is, not even just for her” (34). This action-made decision influences the progress the patients make as individuals as they follow his footsteps. The men realize they can follow their own decisions and although few are afraid of her authority some chose to rise against her along with McMurphy, “ dragging them out of the fog till there they stand, all twenty of them, raising not just for watching tv, but against the Big Nurse, against her trying to send McMurphy to Disturbed…” This is parallel to the attitude presented by Taber, when he refused to take the pills, and ignored the Nurse’s request, making him metaphorically influential of the

“…She’s somethin’ of a cunt, ain’t she Doc?” Although Milos Foreman’s character, Randle McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), put his opinion of Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher) in the most vulgar of terms, he was not so far from the truth. In the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), Nurse Ratched’s treatment and care of the patients was unethical when compared to the standards one would expect of a health care administrator. She used control over her patients to ensure order, without regard to the feelings and concerns of the patients. This issue is presented by the director, Milos Foreman, through symbolism, characterization and scenes. This, in turn, determines how the director wants us, as viewers, to feel about the issue.

faculty in order to gain power and take away all of their freedoms, even their freedom

Power and control are the central ideas of Ken Kesey’s One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. There are examples of physical, authoritative and mechanical power in the novel, as well as cases of self-control, and control over others. Nurse Ratched is the ultimate example of authoritative power and control over others but R.P. McMurphy refuses to acknowledge the Nurse’s power, and encourages others to challenge the status quo. The other patients begin powerless, but with McMurphy’s help, learn to control their own lives. Many symbols are also used to represent power and control in the book, such as the ‘Combine’, ‘fog’, and the imagery of machines.

“A success, they say, but I say he’s just another robot for the Combine and might be better off as a failure…”(17).

Out of the four characters listed in this film, the one character that does not exhibit pretense is Billy. We first see Billy as a nervous, shy young boy with a speech impediment. Billy has weird relationships with women; he likes women and enjoys the company of them but is fearful of the women that are most close to him. Billy’s mother and especially Nurse Ratched are the women he is most afraid of. Nurse Ratched has a personal relationship with Billy’ mother, she has a special motherly power that she only has on Billy and not the other patients in the hospital. She can control him into doing stuff he doesn’t want to do because, Billy is afraid that Nurse Ratched will tell his mother about his

In Kesey’s 1950s novel ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest’ Nurse Ratched’s relationship with male patients is based upon differences they hold about gender and identity. Nurse Ratched is portrayed as a masculine misandrist figure that gains power from emasculation. She carries “no compact or lipstick or woman stuff, she’s got that bag full of a thousand parts she aims to use in her duties” . This implies nothing womanly about her as she prioritises her “duties”, suggesting that she aims to control her male patients by ridding her feminine qualities. In addition, she is shown in robotic with a chilling aura. This is evident when she slid “through the door with a gust of cold and locks the door behind her” . This indicates that as a power figure her only concern is controlling her male patients, making sure they are obedient and abiding by her rules. “Gust of cold” implies that by doing so she wholly ruins her relationship with the males due to her “cold” and callous methods. Daniel J. Vitkus states she is “the Big Nurse, an evil mother who wishes to keep and control her little boys (the men on the ward) under her system of mechanical surveillance and mind control.” Yet, can be argued that she is fulfilling her role of working as a Nurse within a mental institution. However Vitkus’s critique is similar to when McMurphy says “Mother Ratched, a ball-cutter?” McMurphy is a hyper masculine force against Ratched’s emasculating norms. Their relationship is essentially a power

Similar to Nineteen Eighty-four, the psychiatric ward is controlled by Nurse Ratched and her staff members. Throughout the novel, the combine;” a machine culture which harvest and packages men…and Big Nurse, its powerful agent” (Sherwood 100) does everything in their power to construct “ a world of precision, efficiency, and tidiness”( Sherwood 39). The head administrative Nurse Ratched a former army veteran is portrayed as a sexually repressed woman who regulates people in the ward , such as the inmates, the black boys and the rest with an iron fist and an iron glove and is the human manifestation of the combine. From the society`s standpoint, Nurse Ratched or Big Nurse is doing her job in a properly, orginazing way through her actions;However inside the mental institution she`s different. Knowing fully of the power that she acquires over the patients and the nurses she has no hesitation of using it to maintain her powers and achieve her