Whether it is called a mental hospital, insane asylum or sanatorium, there are negative connotations connected to these titles. Your head is immediately filled with images of people off their rockers, some drooling and others moaning or crying out while others are being strapped down to gurneys being transported behind dark doors. When one thinks of the patients at these hospitals, one’s mind may wander to inquire about those behind the scenes, running it all. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey hints that Nurse Ratched is herself insane. It provides irony throughout the novel and social commentary about the corrupt system of mental institutions for the audience. By taking Ratched’s behavior and reactions throughout the novel into consideration, it becomes more apparent that she may fit in with the patients more than with her colleagues. Also, Kesey worked as a janitor at a mental hospital and began to think that the patients “were not really crazy after all, just more individualized than society was willing to accept” (Whitley). Through first hand experience, Kesey was able to write this satire on both the patients and staff. Nurse Ratched displays paranoiac tendencies throughout, which push her closer and closer to the edge as her limits are tested by the patients. Her desire and need for the strict routine is the first sign. She “tends to get real put out if something keeps her outfit from running smooth” (28). When something goes wrong she is infuriated, but only on the inside, for she has an odd ability to constantly keep her temper in check. The routine is what keeps everything predictable for her and she is in a constant fear of something getting off its track. Her paranoia is the reason that she detests McMur... ... middle of paper ... ... social commentary for the audience. He is putting the corrupt system of mental institutions on display in a crafty way. Because Kesey has worked in mental hospitals in the past, he is a liable source to give a first hand look into that world that few citizens are aware of. The fact that these hospitals have someone employed that is potentially mentally incapable or unstable is not a comforting thought to anyone, let alone the families of the patients. In the 1960’s, mental hospitals were notorious for having unorthodox methods and sadistic caretakers, which provides a nice little category for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest to fit into. Kesey is using this medium to make his option that mental institutions are run under a corrupt system and staff known. Since then, more investigations were done and regulations put in place so that the patients treatment improved.
Nurse Ratched was head nurse of the ward. She needed to have control over everything. All of the patients feared Nurse Ratched, or as they sometimes call her, “Big Nurse.” That is everyone feared her until McMurphy. Because he refused to listen to Nurse Ratched, the “ruler” of the ward, it showed that there will be dismay between the two throughout the story.
In Ken Kesey’s novel, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, he engages the reader with Nurse Ratched’s obsession with power, especially against McMurphy. When Nurse Ratched faces multiple altercations with McMurphy, she believes that her significant power is in jeopardy. This commences a battle for power in the ward between these characters. One assumes that the Nurses’ meticulous tendency in the ward is for the benefit of the patients. However, this is simply not the case. The manipulative nurse is unfamiliar with losing control of the ward. Moreover, she is rabid when it comes to sharing her power with anyone, especially McMurphy. Nurse Ratched is overly ambitious when it comes to being in charge, leaving the reader with a poor impression of
Nurse Ratched is portrayed as the authority figure in the hospital. The patients see no choice but to follow her regulations that she had laid down for them. Nurse Ratched's appearance is strong and cold. She has womanly features, but hides them “Her Face is smooth, calculated, and precision-made, like an expensive… A mistake was made somehow in manufacturing putting those big, womanly breasts on what would have otherwise been a prefect work, and you can see how bitter she is about it.” (11) She kept control over the ward without weakness, until McMurphy came. When McMurphy is introduced into the novel he is laughing a lot, and talking with the patients in the ward, he does not seem intimidated by Miss Ratched. McMurphy constantly challenges the control of Nurse Ratched, while she tries to show she remains in control, He succeeds in some ways and lo...
I hated Nurse Ratched before and I sure do now. Her sneaky little schemes to turn the patients on each other make’s me furious. I’m glad McMurphy broke down the window; it’ll remind the patients that her power is limited and changeable. Although, she made McMurphy stronger than ever, even with the countless electroshock treatments. Proving his desire to remain strong in the face of tyranny. “And he'd swell up, aware that every one of those faces on Disturbed had turned toward him and was waiting, and he'd tell the nurse he regretted that he had but one life to give for his country and she could kiss his rosy red ass before he'd give up the goddam ship. Yeh!” (Kesey, 187) I agree to some extent, that without her there wouldn’t be a book, she makes the book exciting even if her methods are all but pure. Her character stands as a symbol of the oppression woman received during that time and in a way, the society in which these characters live are flipped. While on the outside woman have no rights, in the ward they are the all mighty, all knowing, powerful, controllable force. So yah, we need Nurse Ratched but I still hate her. During the course of the short novel she destroyed three men, two of which died and the other was lobotomised. “What worries me, Billy," she said - I could hear the change in her voice - "is how your mother is going to take this.” (Kesey, 231) I can’t say I enjoyed Nurse Ratched being strangled by McMurphy, but I do think she deserved it. Although, it was the end to the battle since the Nurse had won the war. By infuriating McMurphy to that point and her ability to remain calm throughout it all, she proved that McMurphy’s action didn’t faze her. She proved that rebelling is feeblish and by lobot...
In the novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” the characters are in a mental hospital for various reasons. Narrated by Chief Bromden, a large Native American man, the story tells mainly of a newcomer to the hospital, Randle McMurphy, who is not actually mentally ill, but pretends to be to escape work detail. A much-feared middle-aged woman named Mildred Ratched runs the hospital. She runs the hospital like a concentration camp, with harsh rules, little change, and almost no medical oversight. The “prisoners” have a large amount of fear of Nurse Ratched, as she rules the place like she is a soulless dictator, the patients get no say in any decision made. This is exemplified when McMurphy brings up the World Series, and the patients take a vote on it. Though everyone wants to watch it, they have so much fear for Nurse Ratched that they are too afraid to speak out against her wishes.
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey is an inspiring story of patients in a mental ward overcoming its oppressive nature with the help of a new arrival named Randle McMurphy. As Randle exposes the corrupt nature of the ward through manipulation and rebellion, medicated and conformed patients as well as myself begin to question the legitimacy of mental illness and the necessity of ward practices.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey presents a situation which is a small scale and exaggerated model of modern society and its suppressive qualities. The story deals with the inmates of a psychiatric ward who are all under the control of Nurse Ratched, ‘Big Nurse’, whose name itself signifies the oppressive nature of her authority. She rules with an iron fist so that the ward can function smoothly in order to achieve the rehabilitation of patients with a variety of mental illnesses. Big Nurse is presented to the reader through the eyes of the Chief, the story’s narrator, and much of her control is represented through the Chief’s hallucinations. One of these most recurring elements is the fog, a metaphorical haze keeping the patients befuddled and controlled “The fog: then time doesn’t mean anything. It’s lost in the fog, like everyone else” (Kesey 69). Another element of her control is the wires, though the Chief only brings this u...
Ken Kesey's novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest takes place in a mental hospital. The main character, or protagonist is Randle P. McMurphy, a convicted criminal and gambler who feigns insanity to get out of a prisoners work ranch. The antagonist is Nurse Ratched also referred to as The Big Nurse . She is in charge of running the mental ward. The novel is narrated by a patient of the hospital, an American Indian named Chief Bromden. Chief Bromden has been a patient at the hospital longer than any of the others, and is a paranoid-schizophrenic, who is posing as a deaf mute. The Chief often drifts in and out between reality and his psychosis. The conflict in the novel is between McMurphy and The Big Nurse which turns into a battle of mythic proportion. The center of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest is this battle between the two, which Kesey uses to represent many of our cultures most influential stories. The dominant theme in this novel is that of conformity and it's pressure on today's society. In the novel conformity is represented as a machine , or in Chief Bromden's mind a combine . To the Chief, the combine' depicts the conformist society of America, this is evident in one particular paragraph: This excerpt not only explains the Chiefs outlook on society as a machine but also his self outlook and how society treats a person who is unable to conform to society, or more poignantly one who is unable to cope with the inability to conform to society. The chief views the mental hospital as a big machine as well, which is run by The Big Nurse who controls everyone except McMurphy with wires and a control panel. In the Chiefs eyes McMurphy was missed by the combine, as the Chief and the other patients are casualties of it. Therefore McMurphy is an unconformist and is unencumbered by the wires of The Big Nurse and so he is a threat to the combine. McMurphy represents the antithesis to the mechanical regularity, therefore he represents nature and it's unregularity. Another key theme in Kesey's novel is the role of women is society and how it contradicts the males. In keeping with the highly contrasting forces of conformity verses creativity Kesey proceeds to compare the male role to spontaneity, sexuality, and nature and the female role to conformity, sexual repression and ultimately the psychological castration of the male. Nurse ...
Ken Kesey in his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo 's Nest question a lot of things that you think almost everyday. With this famous portrait of a mental institute its rebellious patients and domineering caretakers counter-culture icon Kesey is doing a whole lot more than just spinning a great yarn. He is asking us to stop and consider how what we call "normal" is forced upon each and every one of us. Stepping out of line, going against the grain, swimming upstream whatever your metaphor, there is a steep price to pay for that kind of behavior. The novel tells McMurphys tale, along with the tales of other inmates who suffer under the yoke of the authoritarian Nurse Ratched it is the story of any person who has felt suffocated and confined by our
The use of theme in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey brings upon the ideas of misogyny, sexual repression and freedom, and salvation from an omnipotent oppressor, through the story of Chief Bromden, who lives in an insanity ward. Even from the beginning pages of the novel, the reader is introduced to such characters as Nurse Ratched, or the “Big Nurse,” who is said to be the dictator of the ward and acts upon the ward with the utmost control. Another branch of the theme of oppressors and salvation that relates to Nurse Ratched, as well as Randle McMurphy, is the idea that they are both representatives of figures based in Catholicism. Sexual repression and freedom is seen with the ultimate punishment in the ward, a lobotomy, being stated as equivalent to castration. Both of the operations are seen as emasculating, removing the men’s personal freedom, individuality, and sexual expression, and reducing them to a child-like state. All of these different pieces of the theme relates to a powerful institution that, because of the advances of the time, such as technology and civil rights for women, is causing men to be common workers without distinctive thoughts that must fit the everyday working mold of the 1950s.
McMurphy’s influence on the other patients steadily grows as he singlehandedly instigates reform in the hospital. Each minor triumph he accomplishes steadily undermines and threatens Nurse Ratched’s tyrannical rule. His most notable victory over Nurse Ratched occurs when he changes the schedule in the...
Ken Kesey appears to show disgust for people of power in his book One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. Throughout the novel, Nurse Ratched, the lady within whom lays all the power of the staff in a mental institution, frequently sends people who she has behavioral problems with off to the disturbed wing, like she did Maxwell Taber. It is there that they experience the pain of either electroshock therapy, or a full frontal lobotomy. Nurse Ratched uses this and her natural dominance to inspire fear in her patients. She tends to agree with old school of thought that a healthy dose of fear makes people easier to control. Thus she was able to easily putdown any uprising against her totalitarian rule before Randle McMurphy. Nurse Ratched tries to use the power that has been given to her as head nurse to change the patients as she sees fit. As Bromden puts it, "Working alongside others... she is a veteran of adjusting things" (p. 30). But to do this she has created a living hell for them. McMurphy, one of the rare man that dares to vocalize his opinion, shows his negative sentiment towards Nurse Ratched when he tells Harding, "Hell with that; she's a bitch a ball cutter..." (p. 58). The entire ward can see how power has corrupted Nurse Ratched into the pseudo-megalomaniac/sadist she now is.
In Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, the author refers to the many struggles people individually face in life. Through the conflict between Nurse Ratched and McMurphy, the novel explores the themes of individuality and rebellion against conformity. With these themes, Kesey makes various points which help us understand which situations of repression can lead an individual to insanity. These points include: the effects of sexual repression, woman as castrators, and the pressures we face from society to conform. Through these points, Kesey encourages the reader to consider that people react differently in the face of repression, and makes the reader realize the value of alternative states of perception, rather than simply writing them off as "crazy."
She controlled every movement and every person’s actions and thoughts. She made the doctors so miserable when they did not follow her instructions, that they begged to be transferred out if. “I'm disappointed in you. Even if one hadn't read his history all one should need to do is pay attention to his behavior on the ward to realize how absurd the suggestion is. This man is not only very very sick, but I believe he is definitely a Potential Assaultive” (). This quote from the book illustrated how Nurse Ratched controlled her ward. She manipulated people into siding with her regardless of whether it was the right decision. This was malpractice by Nurse Ratched because she did not allow the doctor, who was trained to diagnose patients, to do his job properly. Instead, she manipulated the doctor to diagnose the patients incorrectly in order to benefit her interests rather than those of the
The author of One Flew over the Cuckoo 's Nest, allows the reader to explore different psychoanalytic issues in literature. The ability to use works literature to learn about real world conflicts allows us to use prior knowledge to interact with these problems in reality. Ken Kesey, the author of the above novel and Carl Jung, author of “The Archetype and the Collective Unconscious” wrote how the mind can be easily overtaken by many outside factors from the past or present. The novel takes place in an asylum that is aimed to contain individuals that have a mental issue or problem. The doctors and care takers are seen as tyrants and barriers that inhibit the patients to improve their health, while the patients are limited by their initial conditions