Power is the predominant theme of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey: who has power, who doesn't, who wants it, who loses it , how it is used to intimidate and manipulate and for what purposes and, above all, how it is disrupted and subverted, challenged, denied and assumed. On a deeper level, the theme reveals the ways in which an individual seeking power reduces all others who threaten that pursuit to the level of disposable commodities, and this dichotomy is, in turn, embodied in the chaotic relationship shared between Nurse Ratched and her opponent, Randle Patrick McMurphy. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Before McMurphy arrives at the hospital, Nurse Ratched's routine works efficiently in maintaining a simple sense of order. “The unit is a factory for the Combine,” “Chief” Bromden notes in his account. "It serves to correct the mistakes made in neighborhoods, schools and churches... When a completed product returns to society, all set up like new, sometimes better than new, it brings joy to the Big Nurse's heart; something that had arrived so twisted and different it is now a functioning and adapted component, a credit to the whole outfit and a wonder to behold." However, this efficiency does not exist in the hospital as a whole, but only within the walls of Nurse Ratched's department. “One may sometimes have the impression,” Harding later tells McMurphy, “having lived only in our ward, that the hospital is a vast efficient mechanism which would work well enough if the patient were not forced upon it.” Certainly the routine described by Bromden in the fourth chapter of the first part is sufficient proof of this statement: each inmate is assigned a job and must respect Nurse Ratched's rigid schedule, and each inmate fulfills his duties without asking questions and without no disturbance. that time... until McMurphy arrives. “[He has] a marked contempt for discipline and authority,” hospital staff are told. "Many times he showed his hostility against authority figures: at school, in the service, in prison!" And with the disruptive presence of McMurphy entering the hospital car, the conflict begins. It is clear from the beginning that Nurse Ratched holds power in the ward: "We are victims of a matriarchy," Harding tells McMurphy shortly after McMurphy's arrival. The fact that they live under a strict regime is evident in the way every inmate in the ward is labeled "acute" or "chronic" and, similarly, in the way Nurse Ratched is referred to simply as the "big nurse." . ' As such, he holds power not necessarily for a characteristic reason and not just because of the things he does, but more importantly, he holds power for a functional reason, because of the role he plays. She's the nurse, and she's in charge, and the inmates are simply objects in the machine, Acute and Chronic, and she doesn't treat them as individual people, perhaps because none of them particularly stand out as individuals. But this cannot be said of McMurphy, and so she immediately sets to work to undermine the power of Nurse Ratched and her regime, resulting in her reestablishing her power at a characteristic rather than functional level - that is, she is forced to do it. re-establishing power through the actions he takes rather than through the role he plays - and McMurphy makes this change necessary by reinstating in the department the only thing he has removed that has a power comparable to his: laughter. "I've never seen a scarier looking group than you guys in my life," he tells aiprisoners. "[You're] even scared to open up and laugh. You know, that's the first thing that struck me about this place, that there was no one laughing... Man, when you lose your laughter, you lose your balance.. A man goes around letting a woman beat him, he can't laugh anymore and he loses one of the greatest advantages he has on his side. First he will start to think that she is tougher than him." And he manages to bring laughter back to the ward: "Sometimes I forget what laughter can do," says the boss. He later notes McMurphy's use of humor as a weapon against the routine of the department: "You begin to see how funny the whole thing is - the rules, the disapproving looks they use to enforce the rules... [and] he laughs, and it exasperates them to no end. He's safe as long as he can laugh, he thinks, and it works quite well. Of course, Nurse Ratched can't play McMurphy's game his growing familiarity with the machine of the department, therefore, to regain it Having lost power over him, he decides to upset his role within that machine a suggestion circulates that she will send him to Disturbed, but she changes the rules to reassert her power over the ward as a whole, and leaves it. "I've seen [Nurse Ratched] send men half the size of McMurphy to the Disturbeds for the simple reason that there was a chance they might spit on someone, " says Bromden, "[and] now he's got this bullshit. a man who targeted her and all the other staff members, a boy who she almost said was walking out of the ward this afternoon, and she says no. "She says no because she understands the mechanics of the power play: " Would removing him undo the damage that has been done to our department?" he asks. "I don't think that... I think if he were sent to Disturbed now it would be exactly what patients expect. He would be a martyr to them." What he doesn't count on is that McMurphy also understands the rules of the power game. He too rejects her expectations and begins to obediently play by her rules - "he surprised everyone on the ward by getting up early and polishing that latrine until it glowed" - but, in retaliation, she rejects his expectations of recognizing this change in her behavior. "She acted as if there was nothing surprising." In this case there is a power a structure to work that is more moral in nature than the power structure that was in place when McMurphy arrived on the ward: it is the power of a character and his characteristic tendencies rather than the power of a person performing a function which McMurphy sets the rules of the interruption, which Nurse Ratched then relies on when she chooses not to fulfill her responsibilities in terms of resolving that interruption, which McMurphy chooses to voluntarily resolve the interruption she wants. caused, constructed once again by Nurse Ratched who did not recognize this resolution. McMurphy takes over as a result of this structure: he puts Nurse Ratched in the position where she can refuse the opportunity to recognize her voluntary resolution of her disorder and, in so doing, recognize her power to hurt or heal the ward as she sees fit. appropriate, or he may not recognize his voluntary resolution and, as a result, become a more antagonistic figure than he was before the conflict even began; either way, he loses. "[Some of the inmates] think he's letting her relax," Bromden says, "then he'll give her something new, something wilder and more ornery than ever." This is certainly his tactic; she plays Nurse Ratched the same way she plays her poker games: “she dealt, talked, andtied [the men] up and took them to the point where they were on the verge of giving up, then [he] backed off a hand or two to give them confidence and bring them back with him." The power belongs to McMurphy and the Nurse Ratched is his pawn no matter what he does. However, while the battle between them is rooted in their actions, the heart of their conflict is rooted in their principles. Nurse Ratched doesn't care why certain rules were established: indeed, his excuse for every rule is which is simply for the therapeutic benefit of the patients - but she only cares that certain rules have been established and must be respected. Likewise, in the incident with the reorganization of the television schedule to accommodate the World Series, McMurphy ultimately does not care. what she watches on television, but instead only cares about watching television. It's a question of principle: as long as she manages to change the rules she has established, even if she doesn't manage to change them as much as she hoped, power wins. When the pressure becomes too intense for him to handle, he responds in the only way he can: he gives in and sends McMurphy to Disturbed for electroshock therapy. But once again, even though she physically holds power over him, he is still superior to her: by forcing her to resort to sending him to Disturbed, he made her break the vow she had previously made, and even then she still resists the treatment she inflicts on him and, at least initially, he laughs in her face; laughter is still his weapon of subversion. But he is only against Nurse Ratched until she manages to get the other inmates on her side. This is the next step in McMurphy's methods to subvert Nurse Ratched's power. If laughter is the only truly effective method of subverting that power and rendering Nurse Ratched's severity so impotent, McMurphy is faced with the task of making other men laugh, something he finds difficult to do within the confines of department; hence the need for the outdoor fishing trip. “Maybe [McMurphy] couldn't understand why we still couldn't laugh,” Bromden says, “but he knew you can't be truly strong until you can see the funny side of things.” However, McMurphy's ability to make men "melt" and laugh comes before they even reach the boat: "Never before did I realize that mental illness could have the appearance of power, power," says Harding, after the gas accident. station en route to the fishing trip. "Think about it: perhaps the crazier a man is, the more powerful he might become." Later, still talking about McMurphy, Bromden says, "He knows you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself balanced, just to keep the world from driving you crazy." The fishing trip is the perfect remedy to help inmates relax, and on the trip back to the hospital the fishermen who had insulted them earlier in the day “could sense the change that most of us were only suspecting; they were no longer the same bunch of spineless people from a mental asylum who they had seen receive their insults this morning on the dock." McMurphy gives them the means to laugh, but only later gives them the reason, after the two prostitutes arrive in secret at the hospital. When the secret is revealed, Nurse Ratched's power over men is completely eliminated: her rules have been ignored to the point of obliteration, and her routine and regimen have both been disrupted by the previous night's events. “When the nurse found the pile of pills that Harding had sprayed on Sefelt and the girl,” Bromden says, “we started huffing and puffing to keep from laughing.” Things take a turn for the worse.