Why, friend, that’s most unlikely.” (Kesey, p.54,55) With this type of thinking throughout the novel, that the patients were misguided with what they lack in their lives. By Miss Ratched’s manipulation. When McMurphy comes in the ward with his bolstering personality and laugh, and it instantly breaks up the monotony of the ward.With the Novel progresses. Then McMurphy challenges the Big Nurse to break her down and get under her skin, give the patients their manhood back. Then the guys they need to go into the world since they are an only volunteer and not committed as he is.
“You are committed, you realize.. you are… under the jurisdiction of me… the staff” (127). These words by Nurse Ratched to McMurphy leave no doubt that she completely lacks the ability to compromise with her authority and power. At first when McMurphy shows a little sign of rebellion, the Nurse does not takes it into serious account and treats him just like she would to any other patient in the ward. Whereas, McMurphy continuously rebels against even the smallest ward policies, which includes not taking his medications by tricking the staff and also gambling in the hospital. But his minor revolts and mischiefs does not affect Nurse Ratched at all.
And the second point, the Big Nurse try her hardest to create the fear among the patients, and in many ways decrease the influence of Mc. When Mc try to make all the patients vote for the baseball game, Big Nurse still use her power to let Mc fail but Mc can not find any excuse to refute her decision, the failure of the “uprising for the baseball game” let the patients thought that the Big Nurse had more power than Mc did. Some of the patients, just like Cheswake, influenced by Mc and talk against to Big Nurse because she keep his cigarette and make him crazy. What the big nurse do was just send him to the disturbed. After back from the disturbed, Cheswake suicide when he was having a shower.
He makes friends with George quite quickly and they talk about Lennie in a pitiful but admiring way (pitiful about his lack in intelligence but they admire him for his physical strength). Carlson abuses his power of having a gun by running for it every time he has an excuse to use it. When the men mention the health of Candy’s dog and suggests shooting it to put it out of its misery Carlson is the one who gets his gun and shoots the dog. When Lennie is suspected of killing Curley’s wife, Carlson runs for his gun but George has already got to Carlson’s gun and stolen it. I think Carlson is very abusive of his power in how he does this.
For example when he wanted to watch the baseball game he got all the patients to act like they were watching the game too, just because the nurse didn’t want to put it on television. 3) The mental disorder affects the people around jack because they began to act out against authority. He disrupted the group meetings. That caused nurse Rachett to not be able to conduct those meetings. Also, there were three patients that committed suicide because of what jack Nicholson put in motion.
Part II Summary * After Nurse Ratched’s outburst in the end of part I, everyone stares at her, letting her know what it is like to be scrutinized. * Chief Bromden is afraid that everyone in the ward will know that he isn’t actually deaf or dumb when he raises his hand for the vote because he always cleans the staff room during meetings, and if any of the doctor’s or nurse’s knew that he had heard everything they’ve talked about over the years he fears his life would be threatened. * At the next staff meeting Nurse Ratched uses silence to try and assert her power but the staff misread her actions and see them as approval. During the meeting it is confirmed that McMurphy is a violent man and is ill like the rest of the patients. Since McMurphy is committed Nurse Ratched sees that she can control how long he stays in the hospital.
Kesey uses Bromden’s narration to depict these characters as ‘humming hate and death’ further emphasising the lack of compassion in the hospital. In contrast Kesey constructs McMurphy as an individual and a person of conscience. Before he is officially introduced to the reader Bromden tells them that ‘he is no ordinary admission’ and that ‘he sounds big’ influencing the reader to view him differently to the other patients. McMurphy’s outspoken nature and his immediate refusal to conform to his new wards rules, on arrival telling them in his ‘loud brassy voice that he’s already plenty damn clean thankyou’ also begins to distinguish him as a unique individual entering a very controlled, regulated hospital system. As McMurphy develops and continues to rebel against Nurse Ratched’s strict rules and the unjust system Kesey reveals more about Nurse Ratched through Chief Bromden, ‘change[ing] back
When McMurphy first enters the ward, whether or not it was his intention, he starts a conflict with the Big Nurse. Right at the start, we are shown the dilemma the patients are forced to deal with ‐ Ratchet’s tyranny. McMurphy took it upon himself to help with their battle of gaining some kind of rights. Though the Big Nurse claims that the ward runs on a democratic manner, it truly only runs in the way she wants it to run. McMurphy thus decides to use a voting system to bring simple rights to the patients, such as a separate card room.
Walter is also too proud to take responsibility for his problems, so he pushes them off on other people as if nothing is his fault. From the beginning of the play, we see that from the moment Walter wakes up, he was arguing with Ruth. When Walter decides to go to the bathroom, Ruth tells him that Travis is in there. Walter says "He just going to have to start getting up earlier. I can't be being late to work on account of him fooling around in there."
Since the very beginning he challenges the system in many subtle ways, by demanding changes of the ward policies more in tune with his interest, such as watching the World Series or getting the toothpaste unlocked. Later on, he encourages gambling in the ward, attempts to lift the control panel, and even fights with the aides in order to save his colleague George from getting humiliated. This particular incident gives Nurse Rached the perfect excuse to punish him with electroshock therapy, that he could avoid by admitting he were wrong. Nevertheless, McMurphy is too stubborn to accept those terms, he sticks to his grounds, which is quite admirable, but pointless, as there is no real cause except a useless attempt to prove himself