The film, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, has been categorized as an impactful movie and changed the way many individuals think about certain topics that still remain an issue within society. The way that it was most impactful was the way that it reflected and took an approach to power dynamics. The perspective of power dynamics throughout this film could be very similar to mental healthcare institutions or other institutions spread across the nation. The power dynamic is what defines this movie as a whole. The authority figure would be Nurse Ratched and the oppressed would be the patients that seek help for their mental illnesses.
SETTING One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest takes place in Oregon during the late 1950’s or early 1960’s in a mental hospital. We know this because the memory of World War II is fresh in Bromden’s and McMurphy’s minds. The environment is very grey, dull, confining, and machine-like. There is very little warmth before McMurphy’s arrival.
Nurse Ratched’s desire for control, in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, allows her to manipulate the entire hospital ward into believing her work is for the betterment of the patients. Significantly, Nurse Ratched appears doll-like: hair in a tight bun, a neatly pressed uniform, and “too-red” lipstick (48). Traditionally, dolls, like other toys, are made to occupy the unruly minds of young children. By comparing Nurse Ratched to a child’s toy, Kesey implies she is a mere distraction to the patients from their mental impairments.
In the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey two of the main characters, Dr. Spivey and Nurse Ratched, have different opinions on the Therapeutic Community of the mental asylum where they work. The Therapeutic Community at the hospital, named the Combine by its patients, is supposed to make the ward a democratic place that puts its patients concerns and requests into consideration. Dr. Spivey uses the Therapeutic Community as a way to make the patients feel like they have more of a say in the way the asylum is run and wants them to feel comfortable. However, Nurse Ratched uses this free environment as a way to show her authority and force confessions out of her patients. Dr. Spivey wants the mental institute patients to benefit from a Therapeutic
The novel follows male patients at an Oregon psychiatric hospital who are in the hands of Nurse Ratched, who uses her power to enforce unethical rules on her patients to succeed in maintaining control. However,
Nurse Ratched, the head administrative nurse at a mental institution, exercised her near-absolute power over every aspect of the patients’ lives. Over time, she gradually gained a strong position of power, which was only strengthened by her ability to determine the fates of her patients. She was presented as a controlling, yet peaceful character, ensuring that her calculate outlook on the patients was upheld on every measure. Her strong personality is not seen as superficial, rather permanent through many distractions, revealing a mechanical aspect to her presence. Her lack of emotion was an extreme patience, which she used as a weapon against the patients.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Historical Lens Essay Over 20,000 people received lobotomies in the 1950’s and over 100,00 people received electroshock therapy in the 1960’s. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a very well known literary work due to the surprising way it showed social problems at the time. In the novel the author, Ken Kesey, introduces the reader to what life at a hospital ward during the 1960’s where these kind of treatments were performed. The story follows Chief, a big Native American, as Kesey critiques the cultural view of the late 50’s and early 60’s on gender roles and conforming to, and rejecting, authority by showing the negative effects these can have on characters through Nurse Ratched and McMurphy.
Applying Gender Studies to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, exposes how men on the ward are either immaculated or act as sexual predators. The men on the ward are controlled and immaculated by the Big Nurse’s use of intimidation. It makes the men feel weak and frightened of her. In the novel, Nurse Ratched makes sure everybody follows her rules, “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.”
Weather in literature is often used to symbolize the mood or mental state in which a character experiences. For example, rain is commonly associated with sadness. As it is commonly identified, fog is a cloudy element of weather that affects one’s ability to see clearly, however, it is also used in literature to represent a character’s lack of clarity. Throughout One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, the motif of fog is used to represent the mental instability and confusion Bromden experiences under Nurse Ratched’s ward. As the story progresses and Bromden gains confidence, the fog diminishes and he is able to overcome the Big Nurse.
Statement of Intent: I inteded this text to be an analysis of Nurse Ratched’s depiction in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey. I did this using secondary sources such as Reclaiming Big Nurse: a Feminist Critique of Ken Kesey’s Portrayal of Nurse Ratched in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Philip Darbyshire and The Roles of Women in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Hana Kašpárková. My intention was to compare Nurse Ratched against her male counterpart, McMurphy, and to highlight the misogyny with which she was depicted.
After receiving a lobotomy, a man returns to a mental ward as his friends watch, refusing to believe that he is the same man. The procedure took his once loud and energetic personality, and completely ripped it out of him. Author Ken Kesey captures the harsh and controlled reality of life in a psych ward to inform readers of what goes on behind hospital walls. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Kesey reveals parts of his LSD use and his belief in fighting against conformity through the mistreatment of the mentally ill in the 1960s. Knowing events in Kesey’s life leading up to the writing of Cuckoo’s Nest can help readers understand what influenced the writing of the novel.
She encourages the men in the ward to confess other men’s secrets during Group Therapy. Nurse Ratchet arranges for the men to turn against each other in attempt to keep the ward under her control. She keeps the men apprehensive and needy under restraint, taking their pride of freedom. This quote describes how Nurse Ratchet liked to find the men’s weaknesses and use them against the men. She turned the men against each other.
And a few more gets spots and gets pecked to death, and more and more.” This shows that Nurse is pitting the patients against each other so that she, the leader of the flock, can stay dominate and in control. This reveals that the hospital is not about dehumanizing the patients until they are weak and willing to conform to
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
The movie “One flew over the cuckoo’s nest” gives an inside look into the life of a patient living in a mental institution; helping to give a new definition of mental illnesses. From a medical standpoint, determinants of mental illness are considered to be internal; physically and in the mind, while they are seen as external; in the environment or the person’s social situation, from a sociological perspective (Stockton, 2014). Additionally, the movie also explores the idea of power relations that exist between an authorized person (Nurse Ratched) and a patient and further looks into the punishment a deviant actor receives (ie. McMurphy contesting Nurse Ratched). One of the sociological themes that I have observed is conformity.
