Nurse Ratched In Ken Kesey's One Flew Over The Cuckoo

A famous Chinese proverb states, “One dog barks at something and a hundred bark at the bark”. This use of animal imagery to explain the issues with human behavior can also be seen in Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The novel, told through the eyes of schizophrenic chronic Chief Bromden, revolves around R. P. McMurphy helping the patients overcome their fear of Nurse Ratched and her power and control over the ward. Throughout the book, Kesey uses animal imagery to depict the personalities and behaviors of Nurse Ratched, McMurphy, and the patients. Nurse Ratched is a wolf, and she thrives off of her overbearing control over the patients in the ward and enjoys having everything conform to her set of rules. McMurphy, Nurse

1. In the novel, women are portrayed as mean and feared beings. They are somewhat compared to as evil monsters. An example of this in the passage is on pages 4 and 5. It says, “They sense she’s glaring down at them now, but its too late. They should’ve known better...” This shows the fear the men have after being caught by Nurse Ratched. They are scared by her and fear her actions. Another example of this is on pages 4 and 5, is “She’s going to tear the black bastards limb from limb, she’s so furious. She’s swelling up, swells till her back’s splitting out the white uniform and she’s let her arms section out long enough to wrap around the three of them five, six times. She looks around her with a swivel of her huge head.” This shows the fear

Due to the structure in place by Nurse Ratched’s orders, all patients must participate in therapeutic meetings, where they have a group discussion with the nurse and Dr. Spivey. These discussions specifically target one patient where the others proceed to humiliate them. When Bromden narrates a meeting of this nature, Harding, another patient, is the one under harsh criticism, “The group is still tearing into Harding when when two o’clock rolls around” (Kesey 53). In the ward, the nurse has created an environment where the patients do not feel safe. She pits them against each other using methods such as the therapeutic meetings, which cause the patients to feel as though they cannot trust one another. These elements keep the nurse in power, as many of the patients fear being the target of one of these meetings and worry that they will again be betrayed by others. By introducing order through these activities, Nurse Ratched undermines the safety of the patients that should be under her care and keeps them silent. Nurse Ratched's oppressive order is not only seen in a literal sense, but also through the attitudes of the patients under her care. Chief Bromden describes the nurse as being “able to set the wall clock at whatever speed she wants just by turning one of those dials“ (Kesey 70). Nurse Ratched’s control over the patients’ lives extends to the point where

In Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey provides a storyline about personal experiences he saw occur in a mental asylum. Ken Kesey worked as a staff member in an insane asylum in Oregon. When he wrote the book, he was providing personal memories about the patients and other workers into a story. The entire novel is about patients that are checked into a mental asylum, and their unwillingness to act against the nurse. Throughout the novel, there is a theme of “manipulation” implied. The theme that manipulation is only a powerful tool if the victim is weak enough to not resist it is revealed through the conflict between Nurse Ratched and the patients in the mental institution.

The Beat Generation of the 1950’s and early 1960’s encouraged a new lifestyle for young Americans striving for individualism and freedom, which included rock and roll music, long hair, relaxed style attire, vegetarianism, and experimenting with drugs (“Beat Movement”). Many young Americans of this era wanted to experiment with new social and cultural concepts, rebelling against “normal” American life. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, written by Ken Kesey, portrays the gruesomeness of conformity through the lives of patients in one of the asylum’s wards. The novel shows how the patients are confined to strict rules and limited freedom because of Nurse Ratched’s power. The Beat Generation wanted change because of this conformity, by rebelling against the rules and structure of society. In the text, Kesey implies that conformity is damaging because he believed that conformity and mental institutions negatively impact the patients by destroying their self-esteem, while many in the ‘50s and early ‘60s believed mental institutions helped someone become a normal member of society.

In the book One flew over the cuckoo’s nest, Nurse Ratched (One of the main characters) is a main factor of bringing fear into other patients. A film called The Ward there are also patients that are scared of the doctor operating on them. Both the doctor and Nurse Ratched are very alike as they put so much fear in the patients with their aggressive looks and that is why patients go from enjoying their entrance to the ward, then fearing for their lives. In the film the doctor also has a soft side which is not shown as much within the film but Nurse Ratched also has a soft side which nobody sees which means both these film and novel have a great connection within them. When people enter a mental ward for the first time they immediately become intimidated from the way they see how it looks. Sometimes they might see crazy people that could potentially attack them or just creepy staff or overwhelming doctors. In the book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s nest, the ard that the patients are in have specific rules. One of the rules is

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. Both McMurphy and Nurse Ratched approached their leadership in different ways. McMurphy uses transformational leadership, which is a leader that “must perform some combination of the transactional functions (plan, direct, organize, control) in order to build respect and trust… [and the] leader gets people to work towards some higher purpose or goal” (O’Connor). In other words, it is a leader who achieves a “higher goal”, while “build[ing] respect and trust” from the people. On the other hand, Nurse Ratched uses authoritarian leadership, which is when “Policies [are] determined by the leader. [The] leader determines what each member should do and with whom he should work… Some find it difficult to diffuse authority… [which] causes some to feel threatened and insecure” (Sferra). More simply, an authoritative leader is one that has supreme power over the people. McMurphy’s transformational

In the drama film, One Flew Over the Cuckoo 's Nest, Patrick McMurphy was moved from a prison farm to a mental institution to get evaluated for his erratic behavior. Upon being transported to the institution, all his assumptions about his new home were completely wrong. The head nurse, Nurse Ratched, has the whole hospital under her control with little to no freedom for the patients. All the inmates at the institution go through rigorous training to become obedient to Nurse Ratched and her strict schedule and rules. The institution was a very controlled environment with the patients having no control over their own life’s while there. There are four characteristics of a controlled environment and they include the following: status hierarchy,

Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, published in 1962, tells the story of men in a psychiatric ward and focuses on two characters called McMurphy and Bromden, and their defiance towards the institution’s system. A critical factor in this novel are the women. The 1960’s played a significant role in changing the norms of social issues, and the perfect idea of women was changing too. Women were no longer just stay at home wives, but had their own voice in society, and many people did not agree with these untraditional views. Kesey’s representation of women in this novel illustrate them in a poor light that makes it obvious that they don’t fit the ideal womanly persona. Nurse Ratched is the main antagonist who is a very cruel and manipulative nurse, in which all the characters seem to agree that she is out to get them. The other main female role is a hooker McMurphy knew before the hospital who plays a role of meeting the boys needs. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s

The conflict between the two main character's Nurse Ratched and McMurphy serves as a bridge for the overarching theme of sexuality. Or to be more specific the battle of sexuality. In the book the two main characters represent both sides of the spectrum when it comes to sexuality concerning genders. Nurse Ratched represents feminism and McMurphy represents masculinity. With the two conflicting views of how the character’s believe the institution for the mentally ill should be run you can see more of the juxtaposition between the two. Nurse Ratched who ruled with an iron handed fist to keep her distance away from the patients of the ward and establish her role of a women in power in the institution. This from the beginning of the book sets a

Kesey has created Nurse Ratched as a representation of how the ward works. Nurse Ratched works the ward like a combine, when something goes in; broken pieces become the end result. When Nurse Ratched loses her first battle with McMurphy, she ends up “hollering and squealing” about the “discipline and order” she has instilled throughout her years working in the ward (128). Here, Kesey presents how this small act of rebellion affects Ratched system she has perfected over the years. Even though she is screaming about discipline and order, the patients continue to ignore her pleas and sit in front of the television watching nothing. The small act of rebelling and Ratched losing signifies that even though McMurphy’s achievement was small, ruining the combine brings hope back to the patients that there is a slight chance they can save themselves from total destruction. Nurse Ratched emitting the fog to continue running a perfect “combine” has caused a continuous destruction of the patient’s life, and with McMurphy on their side, the patients have a slight chance of saving themselves from Nurse Ratched and the combine

Kesey has used characterisation to get the idea that in this novel there are aspects of venerability and strength. In Nurse Ratched’s case, Kesey has made it so that she is shown with strength and power over the whole ward, including the black men in white, other nurses, and mainly the patients. An example of Nurse Ratched’s power over the patients is when she says to Billy Bibbit, “What worries me, Billy, ' she said- I could hear the change in her voice- 'is how your mother is going to take this.” This shows how one sentence was able to debilitate Billy into begging Nurse for forgiveness and restraint of telling his mother. There is an obvious idea presented by Kesey that the Nurse is dominant over Billy, who has become very vulnerable. Nurse Ratched is shown as a character of strength by the way the writer has created her character. Nurse Ratched is also seen as a strong figure by the way the other characters talk about her, for example when Chief says “To beat her you don 't have to whip her two out of three or three out of five, but every time you meet. As soon as you let down your guard, as soon as you lose once, she 's won for good.” The writer has used this line to show us how both Chief and the other patient give her the strong and authoritative

In order to create a realistic feel of the characters and story, Kesey created his characters that used adult graphic language to express themselves. For example, Harding explains how the patients are too weak to face Nurse Ratched saying, “’ this world… belongs to the strong, my friend! The ritual of our existence is based on the strong getting stronger by devouring the weak. We must face up to this. No more than right that should be this way. We must learn to accept it as a law of the natural world…’”. With this description, Kesey creates a depressing mood as the patients realize their fate of being in there for the rest of their lives. He also makes the reader feel sympathetic for the patients by creating a gloomy image of these hopeless men. Furthermore, Kesey uses this graphic language to show some of the terrible flaws that occur in some of the psychiatric hospitals. For instance, when Chief Bromden described what had happened to another patient, who had questioned what was in his medicine, by saying, “And they brought him back to the ward two weeks later, bald and the front of his face an oily purple bruise and two little button-sized plugs stitched one above each eye”. By describing the patient, Kesey makes the reader create a picture of how tough and abusive the staff of the hospital

In the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the mental patients were not able to view Nurse Ratched as a woman, despite her physical features. This was because of her ruthless demonstrations of authority, and strength. Nurse Ratched is the all-powerful nurse in the ward of a mental hospital, during the years of the 50s and 60s. The men are fearful of her and always complied with her rules accordingly until Randall McMurphy swaggered in. Nonetheless his power was still minor to Nurse Ratched’s.

The novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey tells the story of a group of patients in a 1960s psychiatric hospital. The novel is told from the perspective of one of the patients who, up until the very end of the story, is mute. This character is named Bromden and because of the fact that he doesn’t speak, people think he is deaf. Bromden is in the psychiatric hospital because, although its is unclear whether he actually is skitzophrenic, he has been diagnosed as such. Bromden and many other psychiatric patients live in this ward, under the “command” of Nurse Ratched, nicknamed “Big Nurse”. Nurse Ratched is very bossy and strict with the patients in the ward. Many of the patients find her intimidating, until a new patient shows up