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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. Chief is an example of someone that had their individuality destroyed by her through too many sessions of EST. After Miss Ratched is described, the reader is informed about the black boys and is made known, “They are in contact on a high-voltage wave length of hate, and the black boys are out there performing her bidding before she even thinks it” (Kesey 31). Shaped by Miss Ratched, the black boys are described by Chief Bromden as machines that automatically attend to what she wants done. Often they are part of the destroying of the individuality of the patients and shaping them into society.

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