Needs In 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest'

Dima Musleh
Dewes American Lit, Period 2
18 April 2023
Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs vs. Nurse Ratched Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs highlights the importance of fulfilling basic needs before achieving self-actualization. Maslow’s interpretation of self- actualization emphasizes one’s ability to reach their full potential. This concept also ties in with one’s individuation and their role in their environment. In the book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey stresses the ward’s inability to help fulfill the patients’ basic needs that causes them to never be able to move past the psychological needs and fail to meet self-actualization. This causes all patients to feel as if they are not ready for the outside world or to meet

The ward, in many ways, fails to help the men feel safe and secure in their environment. Throughout the entire beginning of the book, until part three, Chief is afraid to reveal his big secret of being “deaf.” The orderlies think Chief is deaf and dumb. In reality, he hears just about everything that goes on in the ward. In the book, after Nurse Ratched ordered him to complete a task, Chief states “But I am too scared to get out of my chair.” (Kesey 149) Chief does not feel secure enough to show Nurse Ratched that he is not deaf, which then leads him to feel afraid to do something that might suspect him as not deaf. Another example that proves the ward instills fear in the patients is the ongoing fear of laughing. Ever since being admitted into the mental institution, the only patient on that ward that laughs is McMurphy. The rest of the patients are too afraid, as they feel

Many of the men in the ward suffer from low self-esteem and self-respect. The orderlies constantly breakdown the patients and demote their individualty through many different ways. Nurse Ratched taking advantage of their vulnerability “‘you men in this hospital’ she would say like she was repeating it for the hundreth time, ‘because of your proven inability to adjust to society’”(Kesey 167) Nurse Ratched repeatedly destructs the patients on the ward and manipulates them to belive they are incapable of ever being able to function as a part of society. This displays the amount of control the orderlies have on the patients and the amount they take advantage of that, as well. This example ties into the self-doubt and uncertainty the men in the book have in