Examples Of Dominance In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

The struggle for power has been something mankind has killed their own kind for and this has been happening for the last 35 million years. Every person wants some form of power and are willing to go to some extent to get it. Dictator Bashar al-Assad of Syria, who has killed thousands of people with bombs, chemical weapons, and mass shootings just so he can prove his dominance with his power. The countless lives lost just the control of power, many people have lost their homes and families due to this. Another great examples is from the book One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, written by Ken Kesey, which depicts the depths the antagonist will go to control the inhabitants; while, the protagonist goes to many lengths to gain the dominance for the

For example, Randle Mcmurphy, who is a big, loud, sexual, dirty man and who is a obvious foil for the ruthless Nurse Ratched, he is the main protagonist in the story. Some of his fellow ward mates Chief, harding, and Cheswick want to help Mcmurphy gain dominance over the antagonist, Nurse Ratched. She is a ruthless ward nurse who will go any measures to prove her dominance over all. She also will hand pick her own staff to bend their wills with their character’s faults to make them follow her orders. This is why McMurphy is a great opponent for her and created a even greater struggle for dominance. But with this battle of dominance going on in the ward won’t go without some ward inmates losing their lives or sanity. During this period of history, the 50’s, many ward inmates lost their battles to electroshock therapy, castration, and the most common treatment lobotomies (Richards, 1). These treatments were used on patients that were acting up and people who would not cooperate with societal norms. Many of these treatments were used multiple times, so the damage would accumulate and destroy the brain changing the person forever. This is what Nurse Ratched use and many other tools to keep control over the mental ward and its

The most important of these characters was McMurphy himself, after fighting Nurse Ratched for a while, he realized he can't just fight for himself, but everyone in the ward. So he convinced the others in the ward to join his crusade, and soon he was fighting for them, not himself for once. One of this ward inmate whose life changed forever was Chief, the Native American who everyone thought was deaf and dumb. When McMurphy first came to the ward chief was insane, thinking the whole ward was actually a machine and everyone in there was a cog in it. He was so full of it, at one point he said “ I been silent so long now it’s gonna roar out of me like floodwaters and you think the guy telling this is ranting and raving my God…...But, please. It’s still hard for me to have a clear mind thinking on it.” This is just one of the many things he said, and this was how he thought in the beginning of the story. As more interaction happened between McMurphy and chief the more sane he became, and eventually he was able to get out to the outside world; while, the opposite happened to Cheswick during this battle.Cheswick was one the first patients to support McMurphy in his battle for dominance, and actually got a lot of the other patients to join. But when Cheswick acted more bold than usual and McMurphy didn't support him it lead to his eventual demise. Cheswick died due to drowning shortly after, but