One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

10 Pages 2531 Words

re they came to the hospital. One piece of irony in this book is centered directly on Big Nurse. A person is committed to a mental institution to receive treatment for their mental disorder. But ironically the insane patients had more compassion and sanity than the ones taking care of them. “The narrator, an inmate of the asylum, lives in a kind of fog, but he is able to recognize that the authoritarian ruler is more insane that he-...” (Malin 209-11). Judging from Big Nurse’s extreme control issue, inhumane characteristics, and lack of compassion, she above all patients should be the one committed to the hospital. Kesey made Nurse Ratched for the reading audience to abhor, she is known as “the biggest bitch” among other names like the “ball-cutter” because she controls the patients’ every move and thought. “She refuses to allow the male patients to do anything that might remind them that they are still men” (Forrey 316-17). Nurse Ratched restricts the men from both individualism and the ability to live like grown men. Instead, her “primary force and motive is to make men be little boys…” (Martin 314-16). Restraining the men’s thoughts to the level of little boys allows Nurse Ratched to maintain her power, control, and utmost intimidation. Not only does she tamper with the men’s thoughts and decisions, but Big Nurse goes as far as limiting their physical wants as well by, “rationing their cigarettes and denying them the opportunity to watch the world-series on television” (Forrey 3165-17). Big Nurse wanted the men to remain little boys that were unable to think for themselves so they would “adjust to a role wherein lies safety…” (Martin 314-16). Nurse Ratched had a deranged way of thinking. She thought if the men all conformed to be the same person, they would have a better chance of fitting into society when they left the hospital, because they would not make any decisions on their own. Also, by...