Because Nurse Ratched put fear the patients’ heart, they obey her every demand. However, when the new patient McMurphy who comes from a prison work farm to the hospital, the Big Nurse Ratched starts to lose the power she has over the patients. At the end, the conflict between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched, cost McMurphy’s health, his freedom, and, finally, his life. In the novel the obvious differences between two characters mostly shown in their personality, the way threading the people and their sexual view. First of all, Nurse Ratched and McMurphy have totally different personality and different point of view.
Though I believe this power quest is best shown through Nurse Ratchet’s power over the patients in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey. Ken Kesey begins his novel by showing the protagonist Randle McMurphy arriving at an Oregon mental institution in a police car, this shows that McMurphy is already suppressed and most likely not enjoying it. McMurphy was sentenced to the mental institution after getting in trouble with the law and at the prison. While at the institution McMurphy is monitored by nurses both male and female. The head nurse, Nurse Ratchet, is the main antagonist and the person most interested in attaining power.
He suffers from hallucinations and severe delusions that clog his worldview. He fears most of all a thing he refers to as “the Combine,” a corporation type thing that controls everything in society and forces people to conform to the certain society norm. He pretends to be deaf and dumb, almost to make himself appear invisible, which was difficult being that he was 6’7’’. The hospital is run by a woman by the name of Nurse Ratched, the novel’s antagonist, who Chief refers to as “the Big Nurse.” She is a former army nurse and runs her ward with an iron fist.
He is what we call a ‘manipulator’, Miss Flinn, a man who will use everyone and everything to his own ends” (Kesey 29). Ratched implants in Flinn’s mind that McMurphy is a man that is not to be trusted, and despite his charm and good looks, he will ruin the running of the institution, which Nurse Ratched is desperate to avoid. She influences this Nurse so that she will not have any sympathy for McMurphy and that Ratched’s orders and
In the first possible way that fiction can be used to tell the truth is by understanding and reading into or about the events in a fiction story. If you know the truth behind the actual story it is very revealing to how it is in reality. For example, in the story One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is related to Ten Days in a Mad House in the revealing way of how the patients are treated by the doctors and especially the nurses in the institutions. Both of the nurses were abusive and or either threatening. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ratched was the mean and threatening nurse who would tell her insane patients that they would electroshock therapy if they didn’t obey or if they were misbehaving.
Kessey uses the emasculation of men first and primarily with Nurse Ratched. Nurse Ratched is both infamous (2) and conspicuous (3) for her desire to exercise complete control over the men who are under her jurisdiction, regardless of whether you’re a patient or an employee. Even though there are employees, such as doctors, ranked above her, she still feels it’s ultimately her decision on any matter occurring in the ward and the male employees let this be. This is evident in Part Two during the staff meeting where the doctors agree on sending McMuphy to the disturbed ward mainly because they felt it’s what Nurse Ratched would have wanted. She replied, “No.
“Yes” is the answer this machine wants. A “but” is frowned upon. A “no” is suicidal. In Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, society clearly exerts this kind of power by seemingly “choosing” the inhabitants of the mental ward. It even delegates the delightful Nurse Ratched to govern their pitiful existence.
As Nurse Ratched tries to enforce the rules, McMurphy is ready to rebel against them. Over the course of the novel, McMurphy turns the hospital ward into a place of rebellion. Throughout his short stay at the hospital, McMurphy forms close friendships with two patients at the ward: Billy Bibbit, a child like man with a speech impediment, whom Ratched turned into a suicidal mess, and Chief Bromden, who fools everyone into thinking he is deaf and dumb. Bromden often enters a “fog” in order to escape reality. However, Bromden states that it was not him that began acting deaf; it was society that
Cept he don’t never hardly beat them.” (P. 22) Bromden: Psychologically abused by Nurse Ratched and the mental hospital. He lives in fear of ‘The Combine’ and is convinced that she runs the hospital. He has been affected by shock therapy treatment and decides to be ‘cagy’ and pretend to be deaf and dumb. Point 2 (Isolation): Celie: Isolated from the rest of society and forced to work all day and tend to the children. Albert does not allow Celie to see Shug Avery sing at the Juke Joint, and forces her to stay home.
While the male doctors are giving out a pat on the back about the sex with the co-workers. The female doctors attitude are very different than each others. Christina Yang is all about the surgeries and would give up anything to be involve in it. Izzie Stevens is completely different, she is very caring and get very emotional when it comes to her job. She cares much more than needed.