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

Thomas Zimmerman
Honors English Arts 10
Mr Hofsass
5/9/22
The Power Struggle in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
In Kesey’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, there is a rather obvious power struggle occurring within the mental institution. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest is a novel primarily about the events that take place in a mental institution, as narrated by a schizophrenic narrator named Bromden. Bromden spends most of the novel pretending to be deaf and dumb, and benefits from this for the ability to simply observe what happens around him without the fear of people acting out of social bias. He is able to see the power struggle that is latent between Nurse Ratched and Randle McMurphy, a patient who checks into the institution just after

For example, McMurphy goads Ratched many times, especially when dealing with the Nurse’s Station glass; " 'I'm sure sorry ma'am,' he said, 'Gawd but I am. That window glass was so spick and span I com-pletely forgot it was there.' " (Kesey 201). McMurphy says this phrase after he punches through the glass on the Nurse’s Station, to retrieve the cigarettes that Ratched had confiscated. He acts very independently, doing what he wants and disregarding all of Ratched’s rules. He’s the sort of person who acts on his whims, and seems to be a man who is just generally a rowdy person. When he arrives on the ward, this obviously creates problems; “McMurphy bursts on the well-ordered, claustrophobic scene of the psychiatric ward like a psychological bombshell. Streetwise, smart, aggressive, vigorous, he challenges the status quo—the "way things are"—from day one.” (“One Flew”). McMurphy is the rebellious teenager, the one who wants to live life his own way, without listening to others who in normal circumstances, would be above him. On the other hand, Nurse Ratched could be considered as the antagonist in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, through her

Her actions are meant to disencourage the patients, to destabilize their own sense of self. She does not have the goal of helping the patients live their lives properly, and is one for the rules. She could be considered a control freak; one who wants everything to go her way, and no one else’s way. In fact, when she and the other doctors worked on the ward, she remains silent throughout the whole meeting, forcing the other doctors to formulate their own opinions, after which she rejects them all: ‘ "You- are very, very wrong, Mr. Gideon.” It's the Big Nurse.’ (Kesey 156). By doing this, she allows the doctors to gain confidence in their hypotheses, believing that what they are saying is pleasing to the ‘Big Nurse’. After sitting in silence, she