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.
It even delegates the delightful Nurse Ratched to govern their pitiful existence. The major themes present in the pp. 144-215 section are the castrating authority of women, the arbitrary power of society and its means as well as the fickle nature of insanity. They will be examined through the evolution of Nurse Ratched, McMurphy and Chief Bromden throughout the part. Welcome to that wretched world!
The head nurse, Nurse Ratchet, is the main antagonist and the person most interested in attaining power. Nurse Ratchet is an evil lady who enjoys inflicting mental anguish among the patients in the institution; this pain is almost portrayed as a way to make herself feel better, feel superior. She brings up painful past events and shows absolutely no emotion or compassion for her patients. This coldness from Nurse Ratchet is what really enrages the patients causing them to rebel and repel her authority. Randle McMurphy is the patient at the Oregon institution that most rebels against Nurse Ratchet who in turn always tries to keep him in line as much as she can.
Female Objects of Semantic Dehumanization and Violence William Brennan, Ph.D. ABSTRACT Now and throughout history, pejorative language has played a major role in the longstanding victimization of women. This study employs a comprehensive classification of degrading categories -- deficient human, subhuman, animal, parasite, disease, inanimate object, and waste product -- as a framework for analyzing the demeaning words invoked to justify man's inhumanity to women. It concludes with observations about how this pernicious anti-female lexicon of derogation is part and parcel of a pervasive seamless shroud of anti-life rhetoric called upon to rationalize violence against other victims (born and unborn) in contemporary society and in times past. A Longstanding Tradition of Oppression Against Women Subjection to a countless assortment of atrocities has been the common plight of all too many women throughout much of history. The parade of horrors has been virtually endless: the killing of female infants, enforced prostitution, the burning of women accused of witchcraft, widow burning, the reduction of women to sex objects through genital mutilation, the sale of enslaved females, wife-battering, the exploitation of young women as pornographic models, rape, father-daughter incest, and other types of sexual abuse.
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.
Underneath the Insanity “What goes beyond is what you see beyond what you know”, a famous quote by American author and journalist Earnest Hemingway delineates the hidden aspects of the novel, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”. This novel takes place in the mind of a disturbed and paranoid Native American known as Chief Bromden who resides in a mental hospital along with several other characters. He is a giant man physically but a weak and coward person mentally. Bromden undergoes a path towards sanity throughout the novel. The almighty power in charge of these patients is known as Nurse Ratched who is the oppressive and strict figure who represents modern day society.
Caged by the Patriarchal Society Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and “Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria” by Sigmund Freud, both show women who exist (one in fiction and the other in reality) about a hundred years from one another. These women have learnt to survive in a world where rigid structure, manipulation, deceit, and loneliness are caused due to the tight control exerted by the patriarchal society. Dora and Jane struggled to escape this cage that was exerted due to male dominance. Dora and Jane Eyre are both objects of manipulation of the patriarchal society who resorted to forms of male dictated “female hysteria” in order to escape the rigid handcuffs placed upon them. Both Dora and Jane are quiet young when they first encounter some kind of hysteria, or symptoms of hysteria.
The character of Nurse Ratched, who is called big nurse by the others, represents the institution of psychiatric medicine. The social and academic theorist Hubert F Dreyfus tells us that “Foucault was critical of the human sciences as a dubious and dangerous attempt to model a science of human beings on the natural sciences.” (This extract was written by Dreyfus in 1987 as a critique of Foucault) Foucault believed that peoples’ minds cannot be measured by science and scientific terms. Similarly in Hamlet, it has been suggested by the other characters and Hamlet himself that he is “… not in madness but mad in craft” (Act 3 Scene 4 page 8) which suggests that his ‘madness’ is cleverly constructed. Contrastingly in Othello ‘madness is a consequence of Iago’s manipulation. Both characters however are entrapped mentally to some extent, by their own minds and exhibit signs of madness.
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.
In the novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey, a ward of a mental hospital and its inhabitants create an attractive metaphor for the controlling nature of American culture. Throughout the novel, the story of Randal McMurphy, conveyed through symbolism, a new patient in the ward as he battles against the head of the ward- Nurse Ratched. As the fight between these two powerful forces ensues, it becomes more than just a classic case of rebelling against authority. Kesey’s story invites the reader to consider just how vague, or previously vague, the line is that separates and treatment from tyrannical control. Symbolizing a valiant struggle between free will and conformity, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" is a powerful, electrifying, and important piece of American literature.