One Flew Over The Cuckoo´s Nest

9 Pages 2245 Words

Violeta Galera Alba

Literature and Film

Professor: Rodney Stephens

Intemsive Summer Session


One flew over the cuckoo´s nest



In this paper I am going to explore how the main characters of the book work as symbols. To study this issue, I will focus on Nurse Ratched, Randle McMurphy and Billy Bibbit because I
think that these characters represents the main symbols in the novel. In this essay I am going to study also the evolution of Chief Bromdem, the narrative voice of the novel.
Nurse Ratched a middle-aged former army nurse, controls the hospital ward with an iron hand and masks her humanity and femininity side. She represents a machine that demands complete
control and perfect order from everyone, represents the oppressive mechanization, dehumanization, and emasculation of modern society "A huge organization that aims to adjust the outside as well as she has
the inside...like a watchful robot, tend her network with mechanical insectskill, she dreams of there in the centre of those wires is a world of precision efficiency and tidiness, a place where the schedule is
unbreakable and all the patients who aren´t outside, obedient under her beam" (26). So powerful are the Chief´s descriptions of the Nurse as a mechanism of terror, able to control the hospital with beams of
hate,with these descriptions is easy to see the Nurse as the pure image of the evil which is another symbol. "She nods once to each. Precise, automatic gesture. Her face is smooth, calculated, and precision-made, like an expensive baby doll, like a machine."(5) Nurse Ratched represents a desire for efficincy order, control at all costs, she has convinced herself that if some control is good, complete control is better. Ratched has complete control over every aspect of the ward, the black boys, the nurses and even the doctors are completely submissive to Nurse Ratched authority, she selects her staff for their submissiveness, an...