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Authority In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

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Relationships with authority figures in our lives can be incredibly complex. This can be seen in the passage from Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, between the narrator, Chief Bromden and Nurse Ratched. By using literary elements such as dehumanizing word choice, objectifying characterization, and an unreliable narrator , Kesey is able to convey the respecting yet fearful power dynamic in Chief's mind. Throughout the entire passage, the words chosen are used to make the Nurse seem like a monster, and an inhuman machine. Her finger and lips are a "funny orange", compared to a soldering iron, which is able to bring on extreme pain with just a touch. Her weaved bag apparently doesn't contain ladylike objects, instead "gears, cogs..tiny pills..needles, forceps, watchmakers' pliers" and "rolls of copper wire". In Chief's eyes, Nurse Ratched is not a person. By choosing these items to name, and stating that there is no "woman stuff", it depicts that he believes she's unlike anyone else. Powerful, scary and not afraid to hurt anyone. When she approaches the boys in a huddle, Chief sees her "swelling up...till her back's splitting out of the white uniform" and her arms are long enough to wrap around them "five, six times". The exaggeration of her …show more content…

A large portion of the last paragraph in the passage demonstrates this. Her face being "calculated", "blend of white and cream and baby-blue eyes, small nose, pink little nostrils", and comparing her to an "expensive baby doll" shows the side of his feelings besides fear. Even though she may seem like a monster, she's still a woman. Almost like a baby who throws a fit of rage and wants to destroy everything in their path. He then goes on to say that adding her "big, womanly breasts" were a mistake. She is nothing more than a baby with a large "bosom" and an

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One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest By Ken Kesey

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2. In the novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey, Kesey uses images of machinery to compare to Big Nurse, Miss Ratched, and the black boy because of the control they maintain in the ward and destroy the patients individuality. As Chief Bromden, the narrator, is thinking about over the years with Miss Ratched, he describes, “I see her sit in the center of this web of wires like a watchful robot, tend her network with mechanical insect skill, know every second which wire runs where and just what current to send up to get to the result she want” (Kesey 29). Miss Ratched is conveyed as a robot by the Chief with how she controls and knows how to control the ward and the people in it.

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Chief characterizes the Nurse as almost robotic in her manipulation and intimidation. In the first chapter of the book, Chief Bromden illustrates how Nurse Ratched uses her position in the ward to control the patients. Chief says, “The big nurse recognizes this fear and knows how to put it to use; she’ll point out to an Acute, whenever he goes into a sulk, that you boys be good boys and cooperate with the staff policy which is engineered for your cure, or you’ll end up over on that side” (18). Nurse Ratched uses her power in the ward to manipulate and control the patients. This is important because with the Nurse's control, the patients are unable to think and act for themselves.

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1014 Words | 5 Pages

Nurse Ratched’s character is vile in enforcing conformity. She picks her staff to her liking and exercises her authority as she pleases, ensuring that she has total control over the ward. Chief states, “Year by year she accumulates her ideal staff: doctors, all ages and types, come and rise up in front of her with ideas of their own about the way a ward should be run, some with backbone enough to stand behind their ideas, and she fixes these doctors with dry-ice eyes day in, day out until they retreat with unnatural chills” (Kesey 29). Nurse Ratched is detrimental to the men’s physical and mental health. She keeps herself superior to the men through emasculation and shame.

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As Chief transforms into a man who finally realises his own physical and mental power and uses it to prove his worth to himself and society, Kesey proves the importance of freedom and the possibility for people to change. “I remember I was taking huge strides as I ran, seeming to step and float a long ways before my next foot struck the earth. I felt like I was flying. Free. Nobody bothers coming after an AWOL” the Chief continues and plans where he will go next, using

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Nurse Ratched is dominant, racist, and unfair in every way possible. Chief’s description of her physical appearance includes comparing her to a “tractor” where he can “smell the machinery inside” (5) and the way she “walks stiff” (4). Sticking someone like Chief, who is innocent but insane, in a setting like this is what fails him from ever getting

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And you want to take that away from them. We like to hear suggestions and requests whenever we can, but I should think you might at least give some thought to others before you make your requests” (Kesey 106). This interaction shows how Nurse Ratched can easily manipulate a conversation into a respect battle. She uses every fault a patient has against them, and makes them believe it is all because of what they were admitted for. This further supports how Ratched abuses her power as she then turns to more physical terms of manipulation over the patients.

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In his comedic novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey uses Chief Bromden, a Native-American man suffering from schizophrenia, to tell the story of an intense struggle for power between the Big Nurse and a new patient. Named McMurphy, this admission brings an aspect to the ward that is noticeably absent under the Nurse’s reign: laughter. The introduction of humor to the ward disrupts the atmosphere of conformity and submission crafted the Big Nurse. Throughout the book, the two engage in a series of battles as the Big Nurse attempts to prevent the McMurphy and the rest of the men from laughing and while more abstractly aiming to eliminate their autonomy. Battling back, McMurphy tries to teach the men that they themselves can use laughter to fight back against

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One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest is a story written by Ken Kesey that is about people in a psychiatric ward. The story is narrated by Chief Bromden, someone who pretends to be deaf but in reality is not. Nurse Ratched runs the ward. McMurphy arrives at the ward, and appears to be sane and does not seem to have any sort of mental disorder. McMurphy attempts to fight nurse Ratched’s stern way of running the ward.

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“While the ward remains orderly and on schedule beneath the tyranny of Nurse Ratchet, the men are subdued and drugged beyond any human recognition. The patients are distinguished as either Acute or Chronic, depending on their severity, but within the ward at the very beginning of the novel, they are essentially equal in their actions and humanity” (Maupin-Thomas). This shows that Nurse Rachet is a dictator. The significance of this is in the 1950’s and 60’s is when the cold war was ramping back up. So, this book is a form of anti-Soviet Union propaganda, connecting tyrannical rule of the Soviet Union to nurse rachet.

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Meadow Neubauer-Keyes Kozak 2nd Hour - Prompt 1 19 April 2023 Graded Essay #3 Authority and power are some of the most abused concepts in any society, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey exhibits this dynamic flawlessly. Kesey portrays a microcosm of American society in a mental institution led by a woman called Nurse Ratched. The administration of the mental institution manipulates the population of the hospital into subordination. Through the lens of a schizophrenic man with a warped sense of reality and his perception of a feisty peer, Kesey communicates the necessity of confrontation and rebellion when there is injustice and the consequences of blind acceptance of biased and ill-intentioned authority.

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Throughout Ken Kesey’s, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the balance of power is challenged in the psychiatric ward. Out of the several leaders that appear in the novel, Nurse Ratched and McMurphy are the most prominent. During Nurse Ratched and McMurphy struggle for power, they share many of the same qualities. It is argued that: “McMurphy and Ratched are alike in intelligence, military service, distinctive (if opposite) clothing, and conventionally masculine qualities” (Evans). These small similarities; however, do not distract the characters from fighting for their individual beliefs.

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“Man, you’re talkin’ like a fool. You mean to tell me that you’re gonna sit back and let some old blue-haired woman talk you into being a rabbit?”(Kesey,64-65) In this way, McMurphy uses Nurse Ratched as a tool to achieve his own goals, even though he initially saw her as his

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