McMurphy Vs. Nurse Ratched In the book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nestby Ken Kesey, the author explores a motif of power. The head of the ward, Nurse Ratched, holds a tyrannical rule over all of the patients. She has the authority and possesses the power to control the patients. She controls the patients through fear, the schedule of the ward,and medical technology. One of the patients, McMurphy, does not conform to the way Nurse Ratched is running the ward and decides to challenge her authority.
No matter what Tijuana’s job was at the hospital, she went into personal, confidential records and obtained damaging information. She then took that information and shared it with others. Complete violation of privacy. She had no right to not only snoop in his records but then to spread it around work. She should have been fired from both places of employment and should have had to pay for her ignorance.
In part one of the novel, he explains that the ward is “for fixing up mistakes in the neighborhoods…” As much as this is correct, it is still a weird way to look at the mental hospital. Another part of the book that shows that the ward has molded their minds to thin differently and slowly become insane is when McMurphy challenges the other patients to stand up for themselves with Nurse Ratchet, after the first group meeting in part one. It explains that the patients are “Even scared to open up and laugh.” While he explains that the patients need to laugh more he says “When you lose your laugh you lose your footing.” This
For example, nursing records showed pseudopatients writing as an aspect of pathological behavior. Hospitalization is counter-therapeutic and dehumanizing. The staff ignored patients’ requests. The absence of eye and verbal contact reflect avoidance and depersonalization. The sources of depersonalization emerge from attitudes of fear and distrust held by all of us toward the mentally ill and hierarchical structure of the psychiatric hospital.
Miss Ratchet is the main antagonist in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. She is a power hungry tyrant that cold-heartedly runs the mental ward at the Salem, Oregon State Hospital. As the head administrative nurse, she exercises her power over the staff and the patients. She not only is controlling by telling others what to do, but she also enjoys punishing those that disobey or anger her. Nurse Ratchet takes pleasure in being feared by the patients.
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.
If a women is raped then yes they should be allowed to have one, however; if a woman goes out has unprotected sex on purpose, and gets pregnant she should have to deal with the consequences she made instead of murdering a baby. I am very opinionated, and I hate to talk about politics in class. When it is brought up the classroom is no longer a safe, or fun learning environment. I think everyone has their own views, and opinions. No one should be told they are wrong, but when politics enter the room many students and teachers end up
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
The power struggle between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched is the main conflict in the novel because it affects everybody in the hospital also each use their power over the patients and nurse staff in different ways throughout the hospital. This has happened a lot through out history as well. The main purpose of everything that the two do to each other or the people around them is to establish power. However the power they gain or already have can be taken away or ignored easier than it was to establish. McMurphy does not always have power within the hospital; he loses it at some points but gains it back after.
Sometimes other nurses start beginning to create problems between each other by saying that they are not moving fast enough or that they are lazy. I had an elderly patient at a nursing home clinical site scratch my chest because we were trying to help her change into her clothes. The patient was angry and she was trying to hit and scratch everyone in sight. We tried to talk to her calmly and diffuse her unknown anger towards us. The patient eventually calmed down but then had to be put in wrist restraints for the violent behavior.