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

Words: 668
Pages: 3
Open Document
Power is like a drug: once used it’s hard to stop. In Ken Kesey's classic novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the arrival of a rebellious new patient at the psychiatric hospital causes a disturbance in Nurse Ratched’s ward, and this does not sit well with her. One of the main themes in this novel is the power struggle between Nurse Ratched and Randle McMurphy. A few significant examples of this struggle are the patients refusing to do their chores, the day trip McMurphy and the other patients take to go fishing, and McMurphy breaking the glass to glass-enclosed Nurses’ Station. In the first section of the novel it becomes clear that the power struggle between McMurphy and the head nurse is an important part of the novel. One of the most obvious moments between them is Randle McMurphy’s attempt to have the daily schedule change for the week the World Series is happening. Due to the fact Nurse Ratched denies his request, McMurphy takes it upon himself to watch the game even though they are supposed to be doing chores. This causes the head nurse to lose her composer and lose the first battle in their struggle for the upper hand. “...men watching a blank TV, a fifty-year-old woman …show more content…
Though this does frighten the Acutes, McMurphy is able to convince them to go on the trip. “They could sense the change that most of us were only suspecting; these weren’t the same bunch of weak-knees from a nuthouse that they’d watched take their insults on the dock this morning” (p. 254). While out, the Acutes face many things that make them uncomfortable, but they overcome this and return to the ward much more confident in themselves, leading them to not follow the head nurse’s every command as they did before. This moment is another loss to Nurse Ratched, as the physiological emasculation she has dealt out to the patients is beginning to lose the effectiveness it once
Show More

Related Documents: Examples Of Power In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Critical Lens Analysis

greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse,” means that the more power someone or something has that is used improperly the more harmful or hurtful it can be. In the two One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey, and Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, they both show specific details that can be used to back up the critical lens quote. The themes and literary elements in the two novels are very similar, both novels can back up the critical lens quote by reinforcing that too much power can be a…

Words 563 - Pages 3

Comparing Power In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest And

Great power should only be given to people who deserve it. Having too much power can lead people to becoming very strong headed. Hitler is an example of someone who has too much power. He had so much that he was able to use it to kill millions of innocent people. We go through lots of different procedures to pick representative to showcase our country through elections. Which is because we do not want that much power being in the wrong hands. So what happens if too much power is given to one person…

Words 1950 - Pages 8

What Is The Authority In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey contrasts life in an asylum and society. The intention of Ken Kesey’s argument is to prove how the authority is in control and that there is no freedom. Throughout part two of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the asylums comparison to “The Combine” is mentioned and allows the reader to understand why Chief Bromden uses that reference. The ward is comparable to society because there are a set of many rules and limited freedom. Throughout One Flew Over…

Words 517 - Pages 3

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Comparative Essay

compare for my New Hollywood analysis are 1975’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and 2015’s Suffragette. Though they were filmed forty years apart and are about contrasting subjects, they both share the theme of rebellion. As far as structure goes, a notable difference between the two films is that in one, a new person is brought into a group and begins the rebellion, whereas in the other, a new person joins a group of rebels. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Jack Nicholson’s character, McMurphy (“Mac”)…

Words 1019 - Pages 5

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Research Paper

The Power of Protest Power can be shown through words or actions. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a great example of characters protesting power. The book and the movie give multiple examples of the characters protesting power, these instances are portrayed very differently. Given the possibilities that power and protest is a shared theme in the novel and film versions of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, other key similarities and differences exist if one considers the the fishing scene and the…

Words 1012 - Pages 5

"One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest" Theme Essay

them from growing and developing. This quote can easily be related to a theme in Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which is a story about a man named Randle McMurphy who fights an over controlling Nurse Ratched, a ward nurse who uses strict rules to control her patients in a mental hospital. Her rules are absurd, unjust, and they give her too much power. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey explores the theme that some rules should be bent and broken in order for people and…

Words 1594 - Pages 7

One Flew over the Cukoo's Nest Research Paper

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a modern fable pitting a marvelous type of good against a marvelous type of evil. Ken Kesey’s timeless novel depicts how society deals with the mentally ill in various ways, while showing how a 1950’s insane asylum treats its patients because of its dependence on cultural attitudes and sense of social responsibility. Kesey’s own experience adds credibility to his charges that called public attention to the conditions of our nation’s…

Words 2846 - Pages 12

LOFT vs Cuckoo's nest Essay

Cuckoo's nest VS Lord of the flies Ken Kesey's novel, One flew over the cuckoo's nest, is about a rude man called Randal McMurphy, who arrives at a mental hospital, even though he has no actual mental illness. As the novel goes on, McMurphy becomes the person in charge of the other patients in the district though there is an increasing disagreement between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched. She is a despised nurse amongst the patients. Because of the continuous commotion caused by him, he receives a lobotomy…

Words 1370 - Pages 6

Authority In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

In Ken Kesey's (1) acclaimed novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the author explicates the hospital ward as a mechanized distension of the Combine, an intransigent system that represents authority and dominance. The main protagonist, Chief Bromden (2) scrutinizes the Combine as becoming a part of his own history as a Native American, where his families land was taken from him with the intention of establishing a dam. This notion of jurisdiction and (3) subjugation depicts that everyone had to…

Words 1380 - Pages 6

Essay on One flew over the cuckoo's nest

Anthony Cutrone Mrs. Cooley Contemporary Literature 16 May 2010 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Essay The decade of the 1960’s was a period of rebellion in America. It was a time of change compared to the previous decade of the 1950’s. “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest” by Ken Kesey is a novel that shows how different the traditionalist 1950’s was from the rebelling 1960’s. The novel challenged the thinking of the 1950’s by using characters to represent the different time periods. The setting…

Words 600 - Pages 3