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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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Is Mcmurphy Presented In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

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

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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.

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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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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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Ken Kesey’s comic novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, takes place in an all-male psychiatric ward. The head of the ward, Big Nurse Ratched, is female. Kesey explores the power-struggle that takes place when the characters challenge gender dynamics in this environment. One newly-arrived patient, McMurphy, leads the men against the Big Nurse. The story is told through the eyes of Chief Bromden, a patient who learns from McMurphy and fights for his freedom.

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One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest By Ken Kesey

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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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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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In Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, female characters are utilized in a way that reflect how appearances set expectations in the form of gender roles. Just as the slender, curvy, dainty form of a woman is seen, so is her delicate, conforming, and docile manner expected. Kesey’s most forefront female, Nurse Ratched, is an unexpected mix of awe-inspiring and fear-inducing. Her appearance, however, is repeatedly described as ruined due to her having huge breasts. Since breasts are obviously characteristic of females, they take away from the role she aims to keep as the head of her ward.

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Cuckoo's Nest: Authority And Power

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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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Authority In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

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