One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Research Paper

Nurse Ratched is a harsh, mechanical, man-made woman, in contrast to how one might expect a nurse to be. Chief watches as Nurse Ratched arrives at the ward, dressed in her practiced look. As she enters Chief observes her from head to toe, stating that her nails and lips match (4).They are a “funny orange” color like “soldering iron” (4). This establishes early-on that Big Nurse has an immediate connection to metal. It also makes her, even from the start, appear unnatural. Her face is “smooth, calculated, and precision-made, like an expensive baby doll” and her skin is “like flesh-colored enamel” (5).

McMurphy’s character is a rebel character who hates authority and authoritative figures. This is, perhaps, why he clashes so fiercely with Big Nurse.

In Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Nurse Ratched runs the ward like a dictator. Her iron grip over the inmates raises the question: how does Ratched’s tactics lead to power throughout the ward? How does its abuse and transfers affect the inmates? Furthermore, the work

Nurse Ratched a.k.a. Big Nurse- Controlling, apathetic, and cold, Nurse Ratched is the villain in the novel. She is in control of the ward, and has the fate of every patient in her

In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey, the antagonist of the novel, Nurse Ratched, a former army nurse, represents the oppressive, dehumanizing, and emasculating machine known as the “Combine” that is modern society. Nurse Ratched holds complete control over every aspect of the ward, and maintains her power by manipulating the patients with their own fears and the threat of cruel treatment such as shock therapy. Nurse Ratchet’s hunger for power shows her true, destructive self that serves to bring for the shortcomings of the patients and eventually leads to the suicide of two acutes. Overall, the author expresses that this technique of military discipline and cruel treatments used by Nurse Ratchet, who is a cog of the “Combine,” is outdated and inhumane.

Finally, Kesey constructs McMurphy as a charismatics alpha male to directly oppose and confront Nurse Ratched’s corrupt dictatorial style of leadership. For instance, since McMurphy is “accustomed to being the top man” he wastes no time in seeking the most the crazy patient because the “…hospital ain’t big enough for the two of

When McMurphy enters the ward, he assumes the role of a leader over all of his fellow patients in the ward. McMurphy has a strong, intelligent character and so he is able to manipulate others who are more vulnerable than he is. An example of his manipulation is when he shows some playing cards with pornographic photographs on them to Cheswick:

However, even when McMurphy believes that he has power over Nurse Ratched, he backs down when he realizes that she has the final say about whether he stays in the ward or is able to go

Kesey describes, “Working alongside others like her [Ratched] who I call the “combine”, which is a huge organization that aims to adjust the outside as well as the inside has made her a real veteran at adjusting things. She was already the Big Nurse in the old place when I came from the outside so long back, and she’d been dedicating herself to adjustment for God knows how long.” Ratched uses her social skills amongst the outer society from the ward to gain power within the ward. Due to her ability of networking herself in this case, a powerful social skill, she gains the “veteran” experience to then be all powerful and able to manipulate what she wants in the ward. McMurphy on the other hand socializes in a different manner as Kesey expresses, “Twenty-one! The Chief’s vote makes it twenty-one” and “…And we’re all sitting there lined up in front of the blanked out TV set, watching the gray screen, just like we could see the baseball game clear as day and she’s ranting and screaming behind us.” McMurphy is able to rally the members of the ward through persuasion of hope. His inspiration of the hope in freedom and happiness inspires Chief Bromden, a man who isolated himself and played deaf amongst the ward, to interact and at that act against the major authority. Not only does he inspire Chief Bromden but a group of patients, thus we see McMurphy is great with his social skills

Nurse Ratched primarily initiates the surveillance in the ward, through surveillance she notes the change experienced in the men and the friendships that formed among them. The friendships are factors that when considered in the ward, makes it more difficult to maintain order. Through friendships, men are allowed freedoms such as: getting “together enough guys for a basketball team, [bringing] a ball back from the gym to get the team used to handling it” (175), actions that go against the rules and authority set in place by the institutions. Surveillance becomes a viable tactic towards reinstating order, as it creates distrust amongst the men, which weakens friendships due to the increasing paranoia of possible punishment. It can then be seen that Kesey argues that distrust clashes with the freedoms possible in the friendships formed, and that these friendships aim to reduce the distrust experienced as much as

One Who Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, written by Ken Kesey in 1962, is one of the most psychologically complex novels, as the author’s choices of narrative and stylistic characteristics create a truly unique, fascinating, emotional and intriguing story. The novel was released in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement, where the way psychology and psychiatry was viewed in America was continuously changing. Being set in a psychiatric hospital, the narrative presents a study of the institutional processes and the human mind, including a critique of behaviorism and an observance of humanistic principles. The novel explores the relationship between the head nurse, Nurse Ratched, and the patients, therefore comparing a person who constrains and someone

To begin with, Kesey uses the character of Nurse Ratched to show how people with power dominate and castrate the weak. After the first Group Meeting, Dale Harding, an insecure, gay patient on the ward compares the patients to a rabbit who “‘knows his place. He most certainly doesn’t challenge the wolf to combat. Now, would that be wise? Would it?”’(Kesey 50). In this quote, Harding is saying how the power of Nurse Ratched is akin to a wolf, who keeps all of her “rabbits,” or patients, under control and to a point in which they do not “challenge the wolf to combat”. This shows the point to which Nurse Ratched is an emasculating figure, as she psychologically castrates the men with her persona and forces them to submit to her. Through this quote, Kesey is trying to illustrate that fact that the patients on the ward are

Nurse Ratched was a former Army Nurse, and is the main antagonist of this story. She was dubbed “Big Nurse” by the inmates after her oppressive, strong characteristics. These characteristics, as well as her hatred for the inmates, and micromanagement make her the enemy of all the men on the ward.

Consequently, the power-hungry nurse sheds any weak womanly characteristics to maintain control in a masculine psychiatric ward. In particular, the innate feminine associated quality of compassion most nurses possess, Nurse Ratched hides: she “has the ability to turn her smile into whatever expression she wants to use on somebody, but the look she turns it into is no different, just a calculated and mechanical expression to serve her purpose” (Kesey 48). Throughout the novel, the author describes Nurse Ratched as “mechanical” and callous, camouflaging empathy behind a “calculated” indifferent smile. Kesey alludes to the fact that this lack of humanity is necessary for her to “serve her purpose” as a powerful head nurse. If Nurse Ratched showed signs of female tenderness, she would expose herself as weak and incapable of such a high position in the psychiatric ward.

Throughout his time in the ward, McMurphy fights against the Combine. As Allen expresses, “In One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, McMurphy stands up to ‘Big Nurse’ and becomes a martyr for the cause of freedom from modern society (and the mental hospitals it has fostered); at novel's end, Chief, inspired by McMurphy's spirit, escapes into the arid eastern Oregon countryside, a free man at last” (294). McMurphy fights against the crushing oppression of the Combine throughout his entire stay in the ward. Whenever and wherever he can, McMurphy refuses to give into Nurse Ratched, only being stopped with a lobotomy. His death spurs the rest of the patients, mainly Chief, to also fight for their freedom and escape from the cruelty of the ward. However, Allen is not the only one to realize Kesey’s martyrdom. Nurse Ratched explains to the rest of the hospital staff, “He would be a martyr to them. They would never be given the opportunity to see that this man is not an–as you put it, Mr. Gideon–‘extraordinary person’” (Kesey 136). Scared of the upcoming damage to her perfectly run system, Nurse Ratched fears sending McMurphy to the disturbed ward will only make matters worse. Ultimately, the Big Nurse was correct, because his lobotomy turns McMurphy into the martyr that inspired the rest of the patients to stand up for