ipl-logo

The Role Of Nurse Ratched In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

643 Words3 Pages

“ Reclaiming Big Nurse, a Feminist Critique of Ken Kesey’s portrayal of Nurse Ratched in One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest”

Monstrous figure- In the novel, Kesey portrays Nurse Ratched as a monstrous figure who intimidates the patients to make them small and take their masculinity away.

Translocated ideal- This concept depicts the role of Nurse Ratched. The stereotypical view of her is this ideal woman who has both nurturance as a mother and sexuality. However, the Big Nurse ‘fails’ to accomplish both. Nurse Ratched does not ‘nurture’ the men on the ward and refuses to express sexual availability. Which could define her as a ‘woman’.

Big Nurse as an emasculator- The Nurse is portrayed as the evil woman in the novel. The novel also makes …show more content…

Nurse Ratched prevents the ward from smoking more than one pack a day, gambling, and watching the World Series baseball on television. She has strict rules and believes that everyone should follow them, and if there is someone who disobeys the other patients are there to call him out for it. Her rules and inflexibility have assisted the patients to turn on themselves and others, especially during their daily …show more content…

She is a powerful woman which makes her unattractive to the patients in the ward. McMurphy does not like the fact that a woman is controlling the men which makes him and everyone else attracted to her. For her physical appearance, her size is fairly uncommon to represent the ideal woman and nurse.

The ideal woman/nurse- In the novel Nurse Ratched is not portrayed as the ideal woman or nurse. Stereotypically they should be more petite and physically vulnerable like the nurse on the ‘disturbed ward’.The size of Nurse Ratched affects the way the men in the ward see her.

Demonized for being a woman- The position Nurse Ratched has is an authority in which she is strong and capable enough to resist McMurphy. Nurse Ratched purposely refuses to ignore McMurphy’s sexual harassment and all of his attempts to break her. Nurse Ratched’s strongest power is refusal to fancy McMurphy, who has claimed to be the archetypal ‘ladies man’. This makes Nurse Ratched an out of the ordinary nurse or

Show More
Related
958 Words | 4 Pages

Chief characterizes the Nurse as almost robotic in her manipulation and intimidation. In the first chapter of the book, Chief Bromden illustrates how Nurse Ratched uses her position in the ward to control the patients. Chief says, “The big nurse recognizes this fear and knows how to put it to use; she’ll point out to an Acute, whenever he goes into a sulk, that you boys be good boys and cooperate with the staff policy which is engineered for your cure, or you’ll end up over on that side” (18). Nurse Ratched uses her power in the ward to manipulate and control the patients. This is important because with the Nurse's control, the patients are unable to think and act for themselves.

Read More
416 Words | 2 Pages

Heartless, cruel, and sadistic are all words people may use to characterize Nurse Ratched. She keeps dictatorial control over her patients, shatters patients' self worth, and is the symbol of evil and oppression in the novel. She treats patients with this authority so that they let her control them, and Kesey through the use of Ratched shows why it’s crucial to stand up and rebel against oppressive authority. Ratched would ruthlessly undermine her patients self worth to a degree where they would become compliant and submissive to her control. The best example of this is how she treats Billy Bibbit, a young, insecure, and vulnerable patient.

Read More
1158 Words | 5 Pages

Due to McMurphy’s attempts to break down the villainous Nurse Ratched with his particularly disruptive antics despite his selfish motives, and Bromden’s quiet progression to courage, the two are heroes to those in the ward. A former army nurse, Nurse Ratched has the entire ward under her control, going by her schedule and her rules. Everything in the ward has gone by her plan, even the staff was chosen

Read More
447 Words | 2 Pages

However, to Nurse Ratched, this window illustrates her dominance over the ward. “The Big Nurse watches all [that the patients do] through her window” (42). Kesey’s glass division between the sane and the insane demonstrates Nurse Ratched’s overall want of authority. Correspondingly, the Big Nurse is a wolf amongst the hospital full of rabbits. As Harding explains to McMurphy that the patients are essentially small rabbits in the forest that is the mental institution, he also notes that Nurse Ratched is the “strong wolf” that teaches the rabbits their place, much like the hierarchy of nature (61).

Read More
363 Words | 2 Pages

Nurse Ratched is the enermy of the worst kind in this book Nurse Ratched feeds on order, and she wants total power , she plans mind games with her patients. Ratched as the head nurse and as a woman. she is able to move things so that most situations fit her ideas. If Nurse Ratched needs to, she uses the force to get things done. She smiles a lot and verbalizes.

Read More
636 Words | 3 Pages

In the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the mental patients were not able to view Nurse Ratched as a woman, despite her physical features. This was because of her ruthless demonstrations of authority, and strength. Nurse Ratched is the all-powerful nurse in the ward of a mental hospital, during the years of the 50s and 60s. The men are fearful of her and always complied with her rules accordingly until Randall McMurphy swaggered in. Nonetheless his power was still minor to Nurse Ratched’s.

Read More
999 Words | 4 Pages

Kesey explains that men cannot handle a female leader throughout the text. The Nurse suppresses the masculinity of the patients because she would have no power against them in their full strength. The men would not respect her power and revolt. Though Kesey’s characters convey misogynistic messages in the novel, the reader understands it as a critique of the male conscience. This timeless novel promotes awareness of gender issues in an uncommon fashion that relates to problems in today’s social

Read More
401 Words | 2 Pages

Lady Macbeth’s assertion of power over her husband in the form of humiliation while simultaneously employing her femininity allows her to use her sexual characteristics specifically her breasts to obtain advanced standing in her overall pursuit of power. On the contrary Nurse Ratched also known as Big Nurse is asexually domineering demanding the patients in the ward “Calm down, as the best thing we can do is go on with our daily routine”(1975 One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) and instills fear as “He’s maybe got more to say, but at this point Big Nurse usually hushes him. ”(Kesey 44). While her assertion of humiliation is similar to Lady Macbeth, her rise to power is solely derived from her utilization of fear and abandonment of femininity. By portraying herself in a hypermasculine manner, Nurse Ratched avoids exposing her “breasts” that reveal her femininity and order remains within the mental ward resulting in chaos that affects the hierarchy of

Read More
1459 Words | 6 Pages

These elements keep the nurse in power, as many of the patients fear being the target of one of these meetings and worry that they will again be betrayed by others. By introducing order through these activities, Nurse Ratched undermines the safety of the patients that should be under her care and keeps them silent. Nurse Ratched's oppressive order is not only seen in a literal sense, but also through the attitudes of the patients under her care. Chief Bromden describes the nurse as being “able to set the wall clock at whatever speed she wants just by turning one of those dials“ (Kesey 70). Nurse Ratched’s control over the patients’ lives extends to the point where

Read More
994 Words | 4 Pages

Nurse Ratched is the main antagonist who is a very cruel and manipulative nurse, in which all the characters seem to agree that she is out to get them. The other main female role is a hooker McMurphy knew before the hospital who plays a role of meeting the boys needs. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s

Read More
816 Words | 4 Pages

The antagonism between me and my nurse Ratched is the most interesting part of the story. We are in conflict because of our almost opposing characters. While the nurse is geared towards punishing and demoralizing law breakers, I am geared towards breaking the law and having fun, especially since my discharge date from the hospital is uncertain. In the first instance, I am denied permission to go out of the hospital having broken Ratched’s window. She would have been justified to do so since my intention was to escape with a prostitute I had acquainted myself with while in Portland.

Read More
993 Words | 4 Pages

There is an obvious idea presented by Kesey that the Nurse is dominant over Billy, who has become very vulnerable. Nurse Ratched is shown as a character of strength by the way the writer has created her character. Nurse Ratched is also seen as a strong figure by the way the other characters talk about her, for example when Chief says “To beat her you don 't have to whip her two out of three or three out of five, but every time you meet. As soon as you let down your guard, as soon as you lose once, she 's won for good.” The writer has used this line to show us how both Chief and the other patient give her the strong and authoritative

Read More
1010 Words | 5 Pages

The movie was mostly focused on the feud between the warden/nurse Ms. Ratched and McMurphy. McMurphy tried to go against the hard-set plan set by the institution. More he tried to establish dominance and leadership within the group. This threatened the nurse’s ways of subduing patients, and they felt of less importance in their own institution. This led to a bitter rivalry and because of it the nurse tried to subdue, with same techniques as with other patients, McMurphy even after realizing that he was not a mentally unstable person.

Read More
775 Words | 4 Pages

Her clothes “could no longer conceal the fact that she was a women”(320). She tries to hide her femininity throughout the whole novel, again because any sign or femininity shows weakness. Nurse Ratched controls all men on the ward and acts as what Kesey characterizes as “manly”. Kesey promotes sexism in this way because of how he characterizes women to look and act in a masculine

Read More
2950 Words | 12 Pages

“Every man carries with him through life a mirror, as unique and impossible to get rid of as his shadow” ( Auden, 1989, p.93) Based on the work by Sigmund Freud, human behaviour can be influenced by their subconscious – “the notion that human beings are motivated, even driven by desires, fears, needs, and conflicts of which they are unaware” (Freud, 1919). As the forced reflection of what can be understood as unconscious internal conflict or the human ego, Freud (1919) argues that the human body develops defences to keep the “conflict” away from the conscious mind, namely; selective perception, selective memory, denial, displacement, protection, regression, and the fear of death. In this essay we will look at the television series breaking

Read More

More about The Role Of Nurse Ratched In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Related Topics

Open Document