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

A leader is a confident person who sets an example for others to follow; He or She is powerful and when no one else steps up they take charge. But the crazy idea behind being a leader are the ways a person can lead differently from others. In the Novel One flew over the cuckoo's nest by ken kesey there are two very different methods of being a leader. There is the head Nurse in the mental hospital known as Nurse Ratched who manipulates and breaks down the patients one by one to control and gain power. And there’s a big red headed man known as Mc Murphy who was sentenced for 6 months at the hospital. He acts as the protagonist and gains the trust of the other patients in the hospital. However the leader that the patients respond to the most

This is because the nurse cuts them down to make them feel small so she can have more power than everyone else. However she breaks down the patients without them ever noticing and says that what she's doing is good for them when in reality it is not. When McMurphy came along he eventually realized that the Nurse was purposely exploiting the patients and says to one of the other patients : "No buddy, not that. She ain't pecking at your eyes. That's not what she's peckin' at... No, that nurse ain't some kinda monster chicken, buddy, what she is is a ball-cutter”(kessey 57). Nurse cuts down the patients mentally without them noticing by making these meetings where they talk as a group which the patients think is helpful but it makes them lose their minds even more. The patients also respond to her because they are afraid of her. If you don’t follow her rules she has ways to punish the patients into learning their lesson such as electric shock therapy. When Harding was speaking to mcmurphy he said “ I guess if she can't cut below the belt she'll do it above the eyes" (kesey ). If the nurse can’t break you down by exploiting your weakness while making you feel smaller she’ll take a more physical approach and shock

The patients respond to mcmurphy because he’s confident and uses the motif of laughter to gain their trust. He also places bets with the others, for instance Mcmurphy bet with the patient that he could lift an insanely heavy control panel which resulted in failure but taught the others a great lesson. When he realized he couldn't lift the control panel McMurphy said: "But I tried, though," he says. "Goddammit, I sure as hell did that much, now, didn’t I?"(kesey 125 ). His actions opened the eyes of the patients into believing that if they stood up to nurse together they would be successful. Thus leading the others into following mcmurphy’s actions making him a leader. One of the patient's, Chief bromden who people thought was deaf and dumb was also influenced by McMurphy, when mcmurphy first came chief acted almost as if he was invisible, as if he was too small. Mcmurphy had asked the nurse if they could watch the world series instead of sticking to Nurses schedule. This resulted in a vote where it came down to a tie between the acutes. Mcmurphy needed one more patient to raise their hand and Chief ended up raising his own hand even though everyone thought he was deaf and dumb. “It's too late to stop it now...There's no sense in it...McMurphy's got hidden wires hooked to it, lifting it slow just to get me out of the fog and into the open where I'm fair game”. “No. That's not the