Critical Response 4
Critical Response 4
Critical Response 4 In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey, there is a battle between order and chaos. Order and chaos take the shape of Nurse Ratched and Randle McMurphy, respectively.
The battle is really simply a tug of war, with control hanging in the balance. Before McMurphy arrives to the ward, Big Nurse has total control. Bromden explains her control by calling her, essentially, a machine. He narrates, "practice has steadied and strengthened her until now she wields a sure power that extends in all directions on hairlike wires too small for anybody’s eye but mine” (16). The use of machinery to explain her control shows how precise it it, how orderly.
McMurphy, on the other hand, is chaotic. However, he too is striving for control by resisting authority. Perhaps because of his history in the Korean War, McMurphy feels the need to rebel against authority. By rebelling against authority, he makes himself somewhat of an authoritative figure amongst the patients in the hospital. Unlike Ratched, McMurphy is a figure of hope and not of monotonous scheduling. This is most apparent when McMurphy takes on his own form of therapy session by taking the men on a fishing trip. In doing so, he made people like George feel needed, and for Chief, "I smelt the air and felt the four cans of beer I'd drunk shorting out dozens of control leads down inside me: all around, the chrome sides of the swells flickered and flashed in the sun" (209). McMurphy's tactics were much more therapeutic than anything Nurse Ratched did for these men, because McMurphy made them feel like men.
The concept of gender and control also affects the relationship between McMurphy and
Ratched. Kesey, in a modernly sexist fashion, uses the male figure to represent authority. In the beginning of the novel, Bromden narrates how Ratchet would try to cover up her breasts because they were an imperfection they symbolize femininity. When McMurphy comes out
Critical Response 4 In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey, there is a battle between order and chaos. Order and chaos take the shape of Nurse Ratched and Randle McMurphy, respectively.
The battle is really simply a tug of war, with control hanging in the balance. Before McMurphy arrives to the ward, Big Nurse has total control. Bromden explains her control by calling her, essentially, a machine. He narrates, "practice has steadied and strengthened her until now she wields a sure power that extends in all directions on hairlike wires too small for anybody’s eye but mine” (16). The use of machinery to explain her control shows how precise it it, how orderly.
McMurphy, on the other hand, is chaotic. However, he too is striving for control by resisting authority. Perhaps because of his history in the Korean War, McMurphy feels the need to rebel against authority. By rebelling against authority, he makes himself somewhat of an authoritative figure amongst the patients in the hospital. Unlike Ratched, McMurphy is a figure of hope and not of monotonous scheduling. This is most apparent when McMurphy takes on his own form of therapy session by taking the men on a fishing trip. In doing so, he made people like George feel needed, and for Chief, "I smelt the air and felt the four cans of beer I'd drunk shorting out dozens of control leads down inside me: all around, the chrome sides of the swells flickered and flashed in the sun" (209). McMurphy's tactics were much more therapeutic than anything Nurse Ratched did for these men, because McMurphy made them feel like men.
The concept of gender and control also affects the relationship between McMurphy and
Ratched. Kesey, in a modernly sexist fashion, uses the male figure to represent authority. In the beginning of the novel, Bromden narrates how Ratchet would try to cover up her breasts because they were an imperfection they symbolize femininity. When McMurphy comes out