One flew over the cuckoo's nest Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

One flew over the cuckoos nest - Essay Example in the beginning entering the ward in a bid to escape having to serve jail time, McMurphy quickly sizes up the other patients and determines what each can do to help make his stay in the ward more comfortable and exciting. However, as he comes into direct conflict with the high level of manipulation and oppression order through the heavy hand of Big contain Ratched, the Irishmans energy and focus becomes a driving study to thwart her efforts. Since it appears that Nurse Ratcheds primary goal is to keep the patients on the ward completely subdued and beneath her control, McMurphy concentrates on helping them recover their own sense of power and independence. As he constantly challenges Nurse Ratcheds authority and demonstrates to the workforce on the ward that they have their own inner power to defy her wishes, McMurphy reveals to the men various ways in which they can help themselves break out of the mental traps in which theyd al lowed themselves to be trapped. Although he didnt set out to empower the patients or to play any role positive or negative in their rehabilitation, it can be argued that Randy McMurphy was more successful than Nurse Ratched in rehabilitating the patients. By comparing Nurse Ratcheds approach to the patients with McMurphys approach, it is easy to see that even though both characters lost something alpha to them, McMurphy was more successful in helping these patients rehabilitate. It is pass on from the beginning of the book that Nurse Ratcheds primary goal is to ensure all the people within her domain are completely subjugated to her command so that she can fix them the way she sees fit. Her purpose in working with the patients is to break them down pat(p) until they are completely manageable to her instructions and desires. These desires are that the patients be fixed to work like the well-oiled machine they were intended to be, which the narrator makes clear right away in his d escription of the tools of her swop that she carries in her handbag theres no compact or lipstick or woman stuff, shes got that bag full of a thousand parts she aims to use in her duties today - wheels and gears, cogs polished to a hard glitter, tiny pills that gleam like porcelain, needles, forceps, watchmakers pliers, rolls of copper wire ... (10). The tools of her trade are the tools of a mechanic intent on trustting broken machines approve together. There is no sense that she values the human spirit that ignites each soul as she works to break down the patients resistance so that she can organize their universe for them. The Big Nurse tends to get real put out if something keeps her outfit from running like a smooth, accurate, precision-made machine ... what she dreams of there in those wires is a ball of precision efficiency and tidiness like a pocket watch with a glass back (30). This concept of the patient as a broken clock continues to be mentioned by the narrator, Chie f Bromden, who illustrates the attention and mistrust the other men have of her motives. She appears in her description like a giant mechanic spider sitting in the center of this web of wires like a watchful robot, tends her network with robotic insect skill, knows every second which wire runs where and just what current to send up to get the results she wants (30). Whether or not she is truly intent on helping these men heal within the limits