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Joanna Martinez AP English Literature July 23, 2015 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest When it comes to manipulation many view it as a negative aspect in life. Although people view it as a negative aspect, they continue to manipulate words and actions to get what they want. Ken Kesey applied manipulation in the book to reveal the positive and negative sides of manipulation. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a controversial novel that describes the inner workings of a mental institution. A very strict nurse named Nurse Ratched runs the mental institution. Nurse Ratched is the antagonist that uses manipulation on the patients. One of Ratched’s methods is the group therapy session. While in the session, McMurphy asks, “Is this the usual pro-cedure …show more content…
But in the reality of the book, this manipulation makes the patients feel down. The only upside of this manipulation is that it keeps them in line. It keeps them in line because this does not help any of the patients progress and it stops them from thinking like any normal person does. This is her method for mistreating and emasculating them. By doing this, she has full control over their manhood. Randall Patrick McMurphy is the protagonist of this novel. He is also a manipulator but unlike Ratched, McMurphy has good intentions. He decides to step up and help the patients because he sees no one is going anywhere. His method to helping the patients was to change everyone’s opinion and help them realize Ratched’s strictness and useless methods. He does this by explaining the pecking party, “And you want to know somethin’ else, buddy? You want to know who pecks that first peck? ..Harding waits for him to go on.. It’s that old nurse. that’s who.” (Kensey,58) At first, McMurphy begins curing them by showing them that, the methods Ratched is showing them are not helping and starts showing them the right direction. He shows everyone things that don’t normally see and this helps the patients move to a healthy state of
The dominant discourse of conformity is characterised predominantly by influencing to obey rules described by Kesey’ novel ‘One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest’. At the start of the novel, all the acute and the silence chronic conform to Nurse Ratched’s rules before the arrival of McMurphy. Since, she was in complete control over the ward until McMurphy arrived. After he arrived, he begins to take control of the patients. He begins to take the role of leader, a leader that was unexpected. Kesey has foregrounded the character, McMurphy to be different thus creating a binary opposite that is represented in the novel. Kesey shows the binary opposites as being good versus evil. The former represents the con man McMurphy, and the latter represents the head nurse, Nurse Ratched. An example of this would be, “She’s carrying her wicker bag…a bag shape of a tool box with a hemp handle…” (pg.4), showing that Nurse Ratched is a mechanic. McMurphy is portrayed as being a good character by revitalising the hope of the patients by strangling Nurse Ratched. This revitalise the hope for the pa...
During group meetings, it is her goal to get the patients to reveal their not so clean past. While Chief is in one of these meetings, he reveals a memory from 4-5 years back in which Miss Ratched succeeds in getting the patients to do exactly what she wants She first blatantly asks the patients to let out their secrets but everyone continues to sit there silently. She then says, “am I to take it that there’s not a man among you that has committed some act that he has never admitted? Must we go over past history? (50). This instantly triggers the patients and they began to pour out all of their deepest and darkest secrets. However, they soon become extremely ashamed of themselves and the confessions they had just revealed. Mcmurphy notices Miss Ratched’s manipulative tendencies in one of these group meetings regarding Harding and his marriage complications. Miss Ratched starts discussing Harding’s problems and reads the log book out loud for the rest of the patients to hear, encouraging them to touch upon the subject. Chief reveals that “they’ve been maneuvered again into grilling one of their friends like he was a criminal and they were all prosecutors and judge and
Nurse Ratched is the most daunting persona of the novel, due in large part to the use of her voice. Throughout the novel, both McMurphy and Nurse Ratched are continually trying to pull each other down. Nurse Ratched, using her dominant speaking skills, tries to prove to the patients that McMurphy is conning them with his vocalizations, “Look at some of these gifts, as devoted fans of his might call them. First, there was the gift of the tub. Was that actually his to give?
Although some parents believe Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is sending the wrong message to their children, the message is positive and can help their children better understand mental institutions and also teaches them that everyone deserves freedom.
Nurse Ratched and her new patient, McMurphy, are in every way opposed to each other, she demanding control, he basking in freedom and independence. Inevitably, as the Nurse asserts her power, McMurphy rebels against it in both intentional and unintentional ways. Nurse Ratched had defeated past troublemakers with electro-shock therapy, or with lobotomies, the latter an operation that makes patients docile members of society at the expense of their individuality. McMurphy was asking for more and more freedom and awakening the other patients to things they have been missing. Nurse Ratched was intent on quelling this disturbance before it became a major issue.
The power of manipulation is a very powerful tool and can easily be misused to benefit
Malin, Irving. “Ken Kesey: One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Critique 5.2 (1962): 81-84. Rpt. in Kesey 440-444.
This novel is a story of self-realization, sacrifice, and the questionable practices of psychiatric hospitals across the United states during the 1960’s. The author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey does a brilliant job of seamlessly portraying the controversial practices of psychiatric wards during this period while still focusing on the main ideas of the book. Kesey does an excellent job of going into depth about many characters in this story within the conflict ridden psychiatric hospital run by a controlling, deceitful, and manipulative woman.
McMurphy does so by exposing the hidden truth kept away by Nurse Ratched and reminding patients to stand up and rebel against the cruelty she imposes on them. First of all, McMurphy comes to the rescue when Nurse Ratched, whose main purpose is to help patients feel safe and reach their full potential; regardless she openly exploits patients to the point of humiliation making them feel unwelcome, and terrified from sharing their own opinions. For instance, when mental patients Dale Harding expresses his feelings of insecurity with his spouse, McMurphy reminds him that if “The flock geta sight of a speck of blood on some chicken they all go to peckin it…Till there is nothing left but blood and bones and feathers.”(24) Despite the fact that McMurphy is still an outsider at this point in the plot and his no relations or friendship with Harding, yet he still decides to advise Harding to stand up for himself or else it might come back to hurt him in the coming future. Secondly, when Nurse Ratched victimizes her patients out of their privileges, McMurphy is quick to help the patients realize they need to stand up to the Nurse in order to not get deceived. For example, when Billy solemnly agrees to Nurse Ratched’s orders, however McMurphy tells Billy to “Don’t move” and just “sit down”
Immediately, he understands that the only way to achieve a leadership role within the ward is through each patient’s vulnerability. McMurphy accomplishes this criticising of others during the weekly therapeutic meetings. By explaining to the patients that “[Nurse Ratched] ain’t peckin’ at [their] eyes” but “at [their] balls, buddy, at [their] everlovin’ balls”, McMurphy forces them to realize that Nurse Ratched has suppressed their masculinity, but at the same time, he uses a similar approach to acquire dominance within the group (59). McMurphy gains the patients’ trust by making them feel as though they need him to gain freedom, when in reality, he is selfish and positioning himself to get the control he desires within the ward. Furthermore, McMurphy takes advantage of Chief, through his silence, in order to make easy money off the other patients. Not only did McMurphy make Chief “[feel] like [he’d] helped him cheat them out of their money”, but deep down Chief knew that they all feel that “something had been kicked out from under them” due to McMurphy’s constant gambling (269). While the patients do not want to admit it, they know McMurphy is scamming them, but they do not have the strength to rebel against
There were no heroes on the psychiatric ward until McMurphy's arrival. McMurphy gave the patients courage to stand against a truncated concept of masculinity, such as Nurse Ratched. For example, Harding states, "No ones ever dared to come out and say it before, but there is not a man among us that does not think it. That doesn't feel just as you do about her, and the whole business feels it somewhere down deep in his sacred little soul." McMurphy did not only understand his friends/patients, but understood the enemy who portrayed evil, spite, and hatred. McMurphy is the only one who can stand against the Big Nurse's oppressive supreme power. Chief explains this by stating, "To beat her you don't have to whip her two out of three or three out of five, but every time you meet. As soon as you let down your guard, as sson as you loose once, she's won for good. And eventually we all got to lose. Nobody can help that." McMuprhy's struggle for hte patient's free will is a disruption to Nurse Ratched's social order. Though she holds down her guard she yet is incapable of controlling what McMurphy is incontrollable of , such as his friends well being, to the order of Nurse Ratched and the Combine.
Many social issues and problems are explored in Ken Kesey's novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. Perhaps the most obvious complaint against society is the treatment of the individual. This problem of the individual versus the system is a very controversial topic that has provoked great questioning of the government and the methods used to treat people who are unable to conform to the government's standards.
Initially the ward is run as if it was a prison ward, but from the moment the brawling, gambling McMurphy sets foot on the ward it is identified that he is going to cause havoc and provide change for the patients. McMurphy becomes a leader, a Christ like figure and the other patients are his disciples. The person who is objective to listen to his teachings at first is Chief Bromden (often called Bromden), but then he realizes that he is there to save them and joins McMurphy and the Acutes (meaning that they have possibility for rehabilitation and release) in the protest against Nurse Ratched, a bureaucratic woman who is the protagonist of the story, and the `Combine' (or society).
...s a time where the people were not afraid to uproar against controlling institutions. During this time period, a common hatred against conformity was shared throughout the public- these people were later to be known as beatniks ("Beatniks and Hippies"). Kesey himself being considered one of these “hippies” tries to portray his radical views through the character McMurphy. He represents the leader of the psychiatric ward, and has the ability to actually see the corruption occurring in the institution. He seeks to rally up the other patients through rebellious acts in order to break free of their oppression of Nurse Ratched (Kesey). Kesey is able to incorporate the anti-conformists ideology through McMurphys’ rebellious nature in the mental ward, and therefore is able to truly capture the anti-materialistic and anti-government tone of the time period of the 1960’s.