One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest By Ken Kesey

From the eternal conflict between God and Satan, to the struggles of Winston Smith against Big Brother in 1984, by George Orwell, the battle between good and evil, morally just and unjust, oppressed and oppressor has been a central theme throughout much of mythology and literature. The novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey examines this theme by detailing the war between Nurse Ratched, the head nurse of a psychiatric ward, and recently admitted Randall Patrick McMurphy, a rough and tumbling redheaded gambler, conman, and backroom boxer. McMurphy constantly challenges the authority of Nurse Ratched and the ward, and defiantly rallies the other men to oppose her authority. Exhausted from McMurphy’s behaviour, Nurse Ratched plays

Though he does not interact with other patients, his sentiment toward both Nurse Ratched and McMurphy is universally shared throughout the ward. Nurse Ratched is portrayed as manipulative, threatening, and oppressive, ironically inhibiting the psychological and physical recovery of the patients. Harding aptly describes himself and the other patients as “rabbits of varying degrees and ages, hippity hopping through their Walt Disney World”(64) and Nurse Ratched as a “Wolf”. Harding explains his powerlessness in comparison to Nurse Ratched as if he and the other patients are just rabbits in a wolf’s mouth. Nurse Ratched manipulates the men to bring “old sins out into the open”(49), by forcing their participation in Doctor Spivey’s theory of “Therapeutic Community”(48). The patients are so blinded by their own shame that they are unable to recognize Nurse Ratched’s true nature, making them easy targets for manipulation. McMurphy, however, immediately recognizes the oppressive nature of Nurse Ratched, and tells the other men they are like a “bunch of chickens at a peckin’ party”(56). He points out that she “pecks the first peck,”(58) or points out the first weakness, and then just sits back and watches as the patients begin to attack one another. Throughout the novel, Bromden portrays McMurphy as the men’s savior, continuously foiling the psychological manipulations of Nurse Ratched, and

The battle between Nurse Ratched and McMurphy ceases being fun, as there is nothing left to win or worth winning. The patients sign themselves out of the psychiatric ward voluntarily and return to society. In the end of the novel, the audience is given one final look at both McMurphy and Nurse Ratched, Bromden’s personification of Good and Evil. Nurse Ratched is a bruised, broken, and timid woman now afraid of her patients, as when Harding approached her to ask about McMurphy she “jumped back two steps”(320). Additionally, her psychological state to the point where she is incapable of speech, as she writes her responses to Harding’s questions on a pad of paper. McMurphy, on the other hand, lobotomized after attacking Nurse Ratched, is a ghost, a shell of his former self. The remaining patients refuse to acknowledge the waxen figure wheeled back into the ward as their former indomitable leader, as Scanlon states “that ain’t him”(321) and Martini remarks “it looks nothing like him”(321). Neither McMurphy nor Nurse Ratched are the towering, larger than life figures that once inspired and terrified the patients of the ward. Nurse Ratched’s psychological state has regressed to that of Bromden’s, now only capable of written communication, whereas McMurphy’s physical