Authority In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Nurse Ratched confirms to the reader that she is infect insane by reacting in the way she did when the boys were enjoying themselves, being compared to Hitler, and her being heartless towards a young man who is suicidal, proving to the readers that she

The oppressor, or antagonist, of the story is Nurse Ratched, or the Big Nurse. Her methods of oppression, including attempts to emasculating the men in the medical ward, is the foundation of the work. The nurse uses her power to manipulate the patients as well as members of the staff in the hospital. Since she is in charge of the entire ward, she runs it with an iron fist while concealing her feminism and humanity behind a patronizing façade. As the story progresses, Nurse Ratched loses some power over the patients with the introduction of a new patient on the ward, Randle McMurphy. As McMurphy continues to fight her oppression, her façade breaks down and falls apart as she loses control.

“We are victims of a matriarchy here my friends…” (Harding). A matriarchy is a social order where women have power. In the novel One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest the women are portrayed as the power figures and have the power manipulate, or control the men in the ward, as shown by the characters of Nurse Ratched, Mrs. Bibbit, and Vera Harding.

Nurse Ratchet held in place an extensive system of rules and regulations, as well as an ordered routine. McMurphy taught the patients that sometimes it is acceptable to rebel against the rules and that they do not have to rely on their schedule to keep their minds together. For example, McMurphy states “Is that what your schedule does for you?” (Forman One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest Film). The schedule is a part of the institutionalization of power that Nurse Ratched employs to maintain control and keep the patients compliant to her sense of order. McMurphy points out that it is in fact a sham that cannot cover the messiness of real life. Obviously, they all realize that the schedule is only a made up method for arranging time. Be that as it may, none of them have ever been able to admit it.

Both Taber and the men view Nurse Ratched as a counselor of their decisions, a mother. In fact, he tells the others, “This is Miss Ratched. I chose this ward because it’s her ward. She’s, girls, just like a mother. Not that I mean age but you girls understand” (37). The way that Nurse Ratched’s ward functions is by her manipulation of the men through the use of pills and lobotomy as demonstrated on Taber. Thus, why he was dismissed, the men are set up to believe in conforming or are dehumanized enough to conform to Nurse Ratched’s authority in order to be prepared for the real world. However, Taber previously rejected her pills, “He still isn’t ready to swallow some-thing, he don’t know what is, not even just for her” (34). This action-made decision influences the progress the patients make as individuals as they follow his footsteps. The men realize they can follow their own decisions and although few are afraid of her authority some chose to rise against her along with McMurphy, “ dragging them out of the fog till there they stand, all twenty of them, raising not just for watching tv, but against the Big Nurse, against her trying to send McMurphy to Disturbed…” This is parallel to the attitude presented by Taber, when he refused to take the pills, and ignored the Nurse’s request, making him metaphorically influential of the

Nurse Ratched, the ward supervisor, personifies the forces that seek to control the individual by subduing their right to think and act for themselves. She acts as a dictator who is constantly manipulating her patients to gain an advantage over them. Because Nurse Ratched supervises a mental hospital, she is expected to tell her patients what to do, but “the novel suggests that Nurse Ratched goes beyond mere supervision and instead seeks to rule all elements of the patients lives” (“Oppression in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest”). Nurse Ratched and her staff dehumanize the patients, and this eventually causes the patients to become broken inside.

The nurse, Miss Ratched is undoubtedly a villain from most reader’s perspective, but there is much more to being a villain that simply being a “ball-cutter” on the surface. In fiction, typically a villain is someone who follows a certain set of motives in order to gain what they are trying to achieve. Whether this is money, power, or something they just do for the sake of the act, all villains possess a motive. Though the reasons behind her actions are not explicitly clear in the novel, it is obvious that one of Nurse Ratched’s main motives is the implied fact that she wants to break down the men in her ward. The reason behind this is that she wants to degrade and force them into the mould of not only society’s, but her own twisted imagery of the way a person should look and act as well. The nurse is an established authoritarian figure in the novel, and presents herself in such a way that her patients not only fear what she may do to them on any given day, but merely her presence as well. She keeps the men sedated with drugs they may not ask about, abuses them and manipulates them with her words and the power of suggestion, and makes self-admitted patients feel as though they are too “sick” to sign themselves out. Out of all the heinous acts she commits in the novel, one of the most villainous is probably the group “therapy” sessions she holds. The men

There are many situations in which Nurse Ratched exhibits control over her patients, by treating them as subordinates, humiliating them and de-masculinizing them without concern for their well-being. She uses control to withhold simple privileges, such as being able to watch a baseball game on the television, tub privileges and their right to have possession of cigarettes. It seems she actually derives satisfaction from this through hints of smiles, which are so seldom seen. This only brings about anger and hostility in the patients because of the way she treats them: like children instead of men. This is put best when one patient, Charlie Cheswick (Sydney Lassick) says, “Rules? Piss on your fucking rules, Miss Ratched! ... I ain’t no little kid! When you’re gonna have cigarettes kept from me like

about his dealings with Candy. In doing so, the nurse is able to get Billy to turn on the other

Regarding Miss Ratched, she seems to show signs of passive-aggressive behavior throughout the book. This behavior adds to her manipulative ways and contributed to the decrease of the patients’ progress (mental/physical state). Passive-aggressive behavior is used to maintain control and power because it’s a way for her to not display any signs of weakness. Miss Ratched, also known as the Big Nurse to the patients, fights hard to remain as the top authority figure in the Ward due to her thirst for power. To maintain the control over the men, she emasculates them, stripping them of their masculinity, in various ways to prevent the chance of an uproar against her. For instance, after a group meeting regarding Harding’s problem with his wife’s breasts, the patients attack Harding. In response, McMurphy provides an analogy of a pecking party to the current

He waltzed into the ward and introduced himself to every patient as a gambling man with a zest for women and cards. Randle P. McMurphy, a swaggering, gambling, boisterous redheaded con man, arrived at the ward from the Pendleton Work Farm. He was sentenced to six months at the prison work farm, but pretended to be insane in order to obtain a transfer to the hospital because he thought it would be more comfortable than the work farm. Bromden senses that there was something different about this new patient. After his first experience with the excruciating routine of the Group Meeting, McMurphy tells the patients that Nurse Ratchet is a genuine “ball-cutter.” The other patients tell him that

Nurse Ratched being the conformist society, the patients as the people of the Beat generation who wanted to see social change and Randal Patrick McMurphy as Kesey himself, the driving force for change. Being aware there is more meaning behind all the characters gives the reader an accurate representation of the social change that was happening at this time from an author that was not only there but also played a large part in the cultural

Ratched has never actually ameliorated the patients’ mental states or issues at hand; she merely speculates on their issues without suggesting helpful advice or solutions. After the group meeting where she forces the patients to bring their dark secrets to the surface, McMurphy speaks to Dale Harding, a local patient, on the demeanor of the group meeting as he refers to it as a, “Pecking Party”, since Nurse Ratched encourages harshful criticism upon the patients. The patients are overly oppressed to the point where Harding has to pretend to agree with the essence of the group meeting, in fear that the Black boys or personnel will hear his true opinion on the ward, as he supplicates McMurphy to save him and the other patients from Nurse Ratched’s intimidating control. Billy Bibbit, who was especially afraid of Ratched’s pressuring questions and expressions, had a mother that was a very good friend of Nurse Ratched’s; his mother had adored him and only wanted the best for her child-like son. Ratched would notify his mother of Billy’s behavior, making him feel immense guilt if he were to say something rash or unacceptable by Ratched’s view. Nurse Ratched, being the Ruler she is, was so obsessively controlling of Billy, that the guilt ensued by threatening to tell his mother of the woman he slept with in the ward, and forcing him to betray McMurphy by saying McMurphy made him sleep with the woman, had lead him to his suicide. There is a boundary within all of us, our conscience, that deems our actions and words appropriate for a given situation; but without a speck of remorse, Nurse Ratched is able to annihilate Billy’s morals and sense of self in front of his friends and the other patients in the ward. A powerful ruler’s greatest fear is being overthrown, and Nurse Ratched had demoralized Billy because of

Have you ever had a controversial conflict or rivalry with another person? If so, the end of that conflict or rivalry probably does not have a clear definite winner; however, In the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, two main characters Nurse Ratched and Randle Patrick McMurphy, had an intensive rivalry with each other, but there was a clear winner in that: McMurphy has won. McMurphy was ultimately the victor in his long rivalry with McMurphy because of the support of his followers the patients, the patients were able to escape from evil (Nurse Ratched), and McMurphy had his long term goal was met while the Nurse’s failed to meet. Firstly, McMurphy got the support of the patients while Nurse Ratched did not;

Personified as Nurse Ratched, the Combine’s tyranny causes a major conflict with McMurphy throughout the novel and much of the persecution that he endures. McMurphy rejects compromise and constantly fights the Big Nurse as she tries to emasculate him and the other patients. McMurphy, as the representative of the individual, fights against the grip of the mechanized civilization that has forced him into the ward. He tries to enrage Ratched to cause disorder and thus destroy the foundation of regularity and consistency; he succeeds in this when he and the other patients pretend to watch the World Series and Ratched explodes in anger.