Analysis Of The Nurse In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Through the addled perspective of the patients, Ken Kesey portrays Nurse Ratched as a callous, despotic matriarch who oversees her mental institution with an iron-fist concealed by a sickeningly sweet persona within the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Significantly, Kesey manifests the nurse’s cold, mechanical demeanor through Chief Bromden’s schizophrenic projections. For instance, Bromden introduces the “Big Nurse” as “[sitting] in the center of [a] web of wires like a watchful robot, [tending] her network with mechanical skill”(30). By comparing the nurse to a vicious arachnid, Kesey demonstrates her lethality as a predator who, upon ensnaring her victims, promptly drains the life from them. Additionally, Kesey juxtaposes the nurse’s insect-like qualities with artificial, mechanical traits.

Obviously, Kesey’s analogies epitomize the nurse’s rigid, unforgiving composure and utter lack of typical human emotions such as compassion and empathy for the plight of her oppressed patients. In fact, the nurse resorts to intimidation techniques, torture, and psychological warfare to manipulate the patient’s into fearful obedience, which is witnessed when Harding, in a brainwashed state, refers to her as a “sweet, smiling, tender angel of mercy”(57). On the surface, Kesey displays the nurse’s façade of genuine concern and caring dedication for each patient’s treatment. However, as a con man himself, McMurphy easily sees through her disguise and employs a persuasive series of animalistic comparisons to expose her truly wicked