Although Nurse Ratched portrays herself as charming and caring in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, this is merely a façade that quickly fades to reveal a compulsive need for complete and total control. Initially, this façade becomes apparent to readers when Bromden notices that “[Nurse Ratched] walks around with that same doll smile…and that same calm whir…but down inside of her she’s tense as steel” (30). Here, Kesey implies that Ratched’s caring attitude is not genuine. Ratched is only able to maintain this fake sense of caring until her ideas do not go as planned. When Ratched’s plans do not go her way, she “swells till her back’s splitting out the white uniform” (11). Ratched plays off the caring façade successfully only until
…show more content…
Every day, the patients all gather for their group counseling session, and the emasculation begins. In one particular instance brought to light by Kesey, Nurse Ratched tells the whole ward that Harding, “has also stated that his wife’s ample bosom at times gives him a feeling inferiority” (44). However, this does not stop here, as she then asks if “anyone cares to touch on [the] subject” (44). Here, Ratched carefully chooses her words in a way that can be interpreted literally, touching upon this subject, and figuratively, as in physically touching Harding’s wife, something Ratched knows will upset Harding. This emasculation is a power control method, which, so far, has been extremely effective for Ratched’s drive for autonomous control. However, Kesey begins to touch on the struggle that Ratched is bound to face with the new admit, McMurphy. McMurphy has been testing Ratched from the minute he was admitted, but when he removed his towel and showed everyone that he still had his underwear— a piece of his life from the outside— it becomes almost too much for Ratched, who, in return, resorts to the most effective method she knows:
Every day, the patients all gather for their group counseling session, and the emasculation begins. In one particular instance brought to light by Kesey, Nurse Ratched tells the whole ward that Harding, “has also stated that his wife’s ample bosom at times gives him a feeling inferiority” (44). However, this does not stop here, as she then asks if “anyone cares to touch on [the] subject” (44). Here, Ratched carefully chooses her words in a way that can be interpreted literally, touching upon this subject, and figuratively, as in physically touching Harding’s wife, something Ratched knows will upset Harding. This emasculation is a power control method, which, so far, has been extremely effective for Ratched’s drive for autonomous control. However, Kesey begins to touch on the struggle that Ratched is bound to face with the new admit, McMurphy. McMurphy has been testing Ratched from the minute he was admitted, but when he removed his towel and showed everyone that he still had his underwear— a piece of his life from the outside— it becomes almost too much for Ratched, who, in return, resorts to the most effective method she knows: