Characters In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

A static character is defined as a character who does not grow or develop over the course of their storyline. In his novel One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey creates one of the most static character in literary history; Nurse Ratched. Nurse Ratched’s most defining personal characteristic is her manipulativeness, which is not altered over the course of One Flew over the
Cuckoo’s Nest. Nurse Ratched’s manipulative nature is important because it allows Kesey to show how corrupted people in positions of power can be. Milos Forman portrayed Nurse
Ratched’s manipulativeness in the movie adaptation of Kesey’s novel quite well. In accurately presenting Nurse Ratched’s manipulativeness, Forman shows how influential of a character she is. Nurse Ratched’s manipulative nature is critical
She tries to convince the patients that McMurphy is only helping them in return for something “I just thought it would be better if we didn’t have any delusions about that man’s motives” (223). When asked about her thoughts on McMurphy, the nurse characterizes him saying “He is what we call a manipulator, Miss Flinn, a man who will use everyone and every thing to his own ends… A manipulator can influence the other patients and disrupt them to such an extent that it may take months to get everything running smooth once more” (29). This shows that she knows the patients are easy to manipulate because she had been doing so for years. The most absolute example of Nurse Ratched’s manipulative nature occurs in the very last chapter of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. After finding Billy with Candy, and the nurse immediately uses Billy’s weak spot, his mother, to her advantage. Kesey uses dialogue to show how the nurse is able to manipulate the emotions of the patients at the ward and