Conflict In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Have your parents ever been in an argument over something but this problem between them is never resolved it is merely pushed to the side? Well, there is no doubt you have experienced this at one point in your life whether it was your parents or someone else’s. This happens a lot of the time in literature and even in today’s society, oftentimes because many people do not know how to resolve these problems and they do not want to try and figure it out. This novel’s theme of men and women struggling to resolve problems is very evident.
An example of this theme is whenever Nurse Ratched holds a group meeting, and McMurphy wants something to change or just wants to get under her skin. One time that this happened was when McMurphy said “The hell

An example would be when Washington said “McMurphy, you forcing me to protect myself. Ain’t he forcing me, men?” (274) He says this because McMurphy was trying to stop Washington from inspecting a fellow patient and he says things that make Washington upset and ends up getting in a fight with him. This conflict has McMurphy ending up in the Disturbed ward or another name for the violent ward because Nurse Ratched wanted to give him heavier medicine that might actually “fix” him. Just like any other conflict these two have this was not resolved he was just given medicine and a few electroshock sessions then sent back to the regular ward with the Chronics and Acutes. Another example would be when McMurphy says, “We can’t disappoint Billy Boy, can we, buddies? Not when he’s about to cash in his cherry. And it should be a nice little party tonight if we can pull it off; let’s say maybe it’s my going away party.” (292) This ends up being a conflict because McMurphy gets caught with one of the girls he snuck into the ward and Nurse Ratched gets very upset. The result of both McMurphy and Billy being caught is Billy killing himself which Nurse Ratched blames on McMurphy for sneaking the girls onto the ward. This conflict was never resolved contradictorily it only escalated into another even greater

An example of this would be when it says “Only at the last—after he’d smashed through that glass door, her face swinging around, with terror forever ruining any other look she might ever try to use again, screaming when he grabbed for her and ripped her uniform all the way down the front, screaming again when the two nippled circles started from her chest and swelled out and out, bigger than anybody had ever even imagined, warm and pink in the light—” (318) McMurphy does this because of the previous conflict of letting the two girls on the ward, once Billy kills himself he just cannot handle it anymore so he loses his mind and acts drastically. The reason this conflict arose was because of building tension that has kept building throughout this entire novel and finally, he just exploded and could not hold in his hatred for her any longer, so he attacked her with the intent to kill. Also, this conflict could be considered resolved but it was not resolved very well, considering she essentially killed him, by giving him a lobotomy. That is how Nurse Ratched tries to resolve all the problems that arise in the ward which is why no one leaves because she is power hungry and makes their conditions worse if they even had one when they came in the first