Compare And Contrast Mcmurphy And Nurse Ratched

Nurse Ratched wants to display the newly braindead McMurphy to show the patients on the ward what happens if they disobey her. Bromden channels his inner McMurphy by thinking back to what he would have done to prove a point. He says, “I watched and tried to figure out what he would’ve done” (Kesey). Bromden takes on McMurphy’s persona which reveals how much of an impact he had on Bromden. The reader may believe that evil has triumphed over good because McMurphy is now merely a vegetable. “Insert quote”... By referring to McMurphy as “the body,” it is dehumanized. The reader can infer that this means Nurse has taken all the life out of him. Bromden not only puts McMurphy out of his misery, but he also escapes. The escape is symbolic of leaving everything behind. Nurse Ratched’s final plot to gain control by presenting McMurphy as a vegetable is soiled and Bromden gets away before she could take control of him. The fight is over and good triumphs over

As a man who pretends to be deaf and mute, Bromden is considered to be a relatively unbiased character, yet he even displays strong feelings of hatred towards Nurse Ratched, proving just how evil she is. As Nurse Ratched enters the novel for the first time, she brings with her a noticeably ominous atmospheric change with, “A gust of cold,” (4) that represents her complete control over every aspect of the mental ward, even the weather. At the pinnacle of Kesey’s totalitarian society, Nurse Ratched represents the tendencies of an oppressive government or what Bromden calls, The Combine. For example, she suppresses the patients’ free will because regardless of the patients actual sanity, she is undeniably in control of their fates at the hospital. Besides McMurphy, the majority of the patients could leave on their own, but Nurse Ratched has been able to brainwash them into thinking that they are not suited to assimilate with others outside of the ward. Billy Bibbit says to McMurphy when he asks why they do not leave, “You think I wuh-wuh-wuh-want to stay in here? You think I wouldn’t like a con-convertible and a guh-guh-girl friend? But did you ever have people l-l-laughing at you? No, because you’re so b-big and so tough!” (162-163). Just like an oppressive government, Nurse Ratched convinces its people that they are worthless so they never feel powerful enough to retaliate. Like an alcoholic, Nurse Ratched needs her fix of power that makes her drunk and

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.

Ratched has complete power over all patients, including their curfew, possessions, punishment, etc. Her might and authority is instilled within the minds of the inhabitants of the ward, leaving no one to challenge her. However, her tight grip over every nook and cranny of the ward and its inhabitants dissipates when McMurphy comes in. He is accustomed to doing whatever he wants while higher powers attempting to restrict his actions. The thoughtless actions of McMurphy could be seen as a catalyst for nurse Ratched’s resolute demonstration of power and authority. His disobedience starts to influence others, and in turn chips away her power as can be seen with the patients gradually easing up. As time goes on, McMurphy's constant breaking of the mold eventually shatters Ratched’s tolerance, causing her to act with an iron fist. With McMurphy’s final act, the choking incident, she finally snaps and abuses her authority and power to the maximum. After the ultimate disobedience, McMurphy unrightfully gets lobotomized as revenge. With this lobotomization, Ratched demonstrates the ultimate use of her power: the power to take away life. McMurphy is officially classified “unstable”, even though he is seen as perfectly normal by the doctor. Nurse Ratched’s power allows her to “help” him by lobotomization. Her power is so terrifying it inspires Chief, who was

In modern day society, individuals are influenced by strong superiority figures their whose dominance stems from internal power. Authority can often lead subordinates to rebel and seize control; therefore ability to obtain power is exceptionally difficult. A rivalry for rigid power is seen in the literary piece, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The limited dominance is shifted fluidly between Nurse Ratched and Randle McMurphy, and finally designated to Chief Bromden. Although Nurse Ratched exercises initial control over her ward, Randle McMurphy attempts to disobey her authority through defiance, and ultimately the power shifts into Chief Bromden’s final control in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

The way Nurse Ratched controls the inmates and punishes them using electric shock therapy symbolizes how McMurphy is trapped. This feeling of entrapment leaves McMurphy in a continuous battle to gain back his freedom from Nurse Ratched. According to McMurphy, “we must pursue freedom at any cost, even if that cost is death.” Along with gaining freedom, Chief Bromden shows characteristics of the second theme, heroism. Throughout the book Bromden pretends to be deaf and dumb. This symbolizes how he feels hidden and different compared to the world he is living in. As the novel continues he becomes greedy for freedom and eventually rises up to his biggest fears when he suffocates Nurse Ratched. Once Nurse Ratched is out of the picture, Bromden breaks the window and escapes from the hospital. The idea that Bromden was able to remove the control panel and use it to break the window, symbolizes his true strength and how he can accomplish anything after running “through” his freedom.

faculty in order to gain power and take away all of their freedoms, even their freedom

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

(Kesey 205). McMurphy again uses his power to create something beneficial and great for his fellow ward-members, and something that Nurse Ratched is unconditionally against. Ultimately, the confidence he has gained from past interactions and tests with the nurse have given him the confidence and the will to do this behind the Nurses back with no

Throughout the novel, he is also shown to be caring for the other patients in the ward. He wishes them to stop being fearful, wanting them to take a stance for themselves and rebel against the ones oppressing them. This attitude dedicated to helping his fellow inmates is shown as early as the beginning, where McMurphy does his best to try and rile a laugh from the other patients who have had the laughs chased out of them years ago. One of the older patients, Harding, tries to explain how they are all rabbits in this world, how they must submit to the wolves for they have no power to stand up against them. However, McMurphy violently rejects this idea, telling him, “You’re no damned rabbit!” (58). McMurphy constantly tries to convince the other patients to stand up for themselves. This becomes most prominent near the end of the novel. After the suicide of a fellow inmate, McMurphy acts and attempts to strangle the nurse, knowing that by doing so will result in repercussions for him. As Bromden watches, he thinks, “We couldn’t stop him because we were the ones making him do it...it was our need that was making him push himself slowly up from sitting...it was us that had been making him go on for weeks” (274-275). Bromden realizes that the way McMurphy was acting was primarily for their sake, for the sake of all the other inmates who looked towards McMurphy as a sign of

In Kesey’s 1950s novel ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest’ Nurse Ratched’s relationship with male patients is based upon differences they hold about gender and identity. Nurse Ratched is portrayed as a masculine misandrist figure that gains power from emasculation. She carries “no compact or lipstick or woman stuff, she’s got that bag full of a thousand parts she aims to use in her duties” . This implies nothing womanly about her as she prioritises her “duties”, suggesting that she aims to control her male patients by ridding her feminine qualities. In addition, she is shown in robotic with a chilling aura. This is evident when she slid “through the door with a gust of cold and locks the door behind her” . This indicates that as a power figure her only concern is controlling her male patients, making sure they are obedient and abiding by her rules. “Gust of cold” implies that by doing so she wholly ruins her relationship with the males due to her “cold” and callous methods. Daniel J. Vitkus states she is “the Big Nurse, an evil mother who wishes to keep and control her little boys (the men on the ward) under her system of mechanical surveillance and mind control.” Yet, can be argued that she is fulfilling her role of working as a Nurse within a mental institution. However Vitkus’s critique is similar to when McMurphy says “Mother Ratched, a ball-cutter?” McMurphy is a hyper masculine force against Ratched’s emasculating norms. Their relationship is essentially a power

While I agree that the heart of this novel is the power struggle that ensues and that RP McMurphy is not "mentally ill", the other patients are more clearly suffering illnesses, to reach the conclusion that McMurphy himself is "not crazy". As readers, we must first examine what it means to be "crazy", both to ourselves and to society at large. When researching Ken Kesey and his life, I had stumbled upon an interesting fact. Ken Kesey heard of a government program that paid people to take part in experiments with psychedelic drugs. When I heard this, I was so shocked, I thought “wow this is going to be a very interesting book.” There were things that I really enjoyed about the book, such as the narrator, McMurphy, and the crazy parties they both threw. Things that I disliked about the book was the death of poor Billy Bibbit, how nurse Ratched treated the

The plot of the story is Bromden’s worldview is subjugated by his fear of what he calls the Combine, a huge conglomeration that controls society and forces people into conformity. Bromden pretends to be deaf and dumb and tries to go unnoticed, even though he is six feet seven inches tall. The all-male mental patients are divided into Acutes, who can be cured, and Chronics, who couldn’t be cured. They are controlled by Nurse Ratched, a former army nurse who runs the ward with harsh, mechanical precision. Randle McMurphy arrives as a transfer from the work farm; Bromden senses that something is different about him. McMurphy swaggers into the ward and introduces himself as a gambling man. Bromden suffocates McMurphy in his bed, enabling him to die with some dignity rather than live as a symbol of Ratched’s power. Bromden, having improved his immense strength that he had thought was gone during his time in the mental ward, but escapes from the hospital by breaking through a window.

Emotional intelligence, or EI, has begun to make head way in the nursing world in its tie to leadership. Nurses are people, so they experience emotion just like every other person. Their work is stressful and trying, it provokes emotion due to the environment and situations at hand. The ability to recognize one’s own emotions, along with those that present in others is an important skill (Morrison, 2008). Being able to recognize emotions makes it easier to manage our lives and our relationship with others. These are the aspects that make a person competent enough to say that they have emotional intelligence. Supporters of emotional intelligence believe that EI may be more valuable in determining a good leader than intellectual