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Foucalut's Response To The Big Nurse

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The Big Nurse suppresses the patients to fulfill her desires by strictly controlling patients’ bodies. The hospital in the novel is a “Combine” which is an organized and mechanical society. The Big Nurse uses disciplinary power to control this small society. She watches them at any moment. The patients do not have their own freedom of activities. In the ward their bodies do not belong to themselves, but belong to the hospital and the Big Nurse. According to Foucault, the purpose of disciplinary power is to make docile bodies that don’t have their own mind and their own freedom. In Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Foucalut claims that disciplinary power is everywhere and every time which is also am improvement way of controlling …show more content…

In the novel, the patients’ bodies become objects of the Big Nurse who arranges their bodies in order to fulfill her own willing. She treats the patients like prisoners. She uses a series of disciplinary power to arrange the patients’ bodies. Observation is an important way to the Big Nurse and she uses hierarchical observation to control patients’ space strictly. In order to control the patients effectively, the Big Nurse divides the patients into two different ranks: the Acutes and the Chronics. The patients in different ranks are not allowed to communicate with each other. Under this condition, the patients are isolated from one another and they are spied since they wake up every morning. According to the Chief, “When I open my eyes she ‘s down the hall about to turn into the glass Nurses’ Station where she’ll spend the day sitting at her desk and looking out her window and making notes on what goes on out in front of her in the day room during the next eight hours”(Kesey 7). There is only limited space in the ward that they can move under the eyes of the Big Nurse. Just like the watchtower, the Big Nurse works in a ward in which there is a glass case used to watch the whole

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