Analysis Of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Sarah Ward

Ms. Dasho

English 11

5/13/14

Cuckoo’s Nest

"I want to see a man beaten to a bloody pulp with a high-heel shoved in his mouth, like an apple in the mouth of a pig." -Andrea Dworkin. In the fictional novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, a mental hospital is turned upside down when a new patient, Randle Patrick McMurphy, is committed and challenges the authority of the domineering antagonist, Nurse Ratched. Nurse Ratched is a controlling, sexless woman whose main objective is to emasculate the patients in the hospital. She carries the theme of emasculation throughout the book by asserting fear upon others, creating a “therapeutic community”, and instilling sexual repression in the ward.

The power that Nurse Ratched possesses gives her the ability to impose fear throughout the ward. After McMurphy’s first therapy meeting, he has a conversation with Harding as to why the patients put up with the cruel actions of the nurse: “No one’s ever dared come out and say it before, but there’s not a man among us that doesn’t think it, that doesn’t feel just as you do about her and the whole business-feel it somewhere down deep in his scared little soul” (62). Harding admits that the patients know what is going on, and often wonder to themselves silently about it. They believe it is wise to stay silent rather than becoming shrewd. The men have become fearful of going against the nurse. All the while, this fear has been chipping away their manhood, and given more power to the nurse. Chief Bromden reveals the staff’s reactions to the cold presence of Nurse Ratched around the hospital: “‘I tell you I don’t know what it is,’ they tell the guy in charge of personnel. ‘Since I started on that ward with that woman I feel like ...

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...illy by weakening him where it stings the most.

Nurse Ratched is a cold, icy antagonist that wholly dominates the novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Her primary goal is to take away all traces of masculinity in her ward. She executes this by formulating fear within the men, fabricating a harmful hospital community, and ridding the idea of sexuality in every way. The patient’s actions show how easy it is for a man to lose himself when put under complete control of a powerful woman. Nurse Ratched offers a new perspective on the idea of power and evil. In most stories, the men are usually dominant while the women are submissive. This causes men to usually be the antagonists who are full of the evil thoughts. It is an utterly different situation in this novel. Ironically, Nurse Ratched was supposed to be the patients’ protector; instead, she was their oppressor.