One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Power

One of the most despicable aspects of Ken Kesey’s novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, is the lengths that Nurse Ratched and the Combine are willing to go to instill order and power in their favor. At first glance, Nurse Ratched appears to be a nice, attractive, and respectable lady who takes care of mentally-ill men for a living, but underneath that initial layer is a deeply cruel, passive aggressive, power hungry menace that is willing to destroy the lives of anyone if someone poses any kind of threat to her position. She uses many tactics to maintain power and authority over the ward that cover both the patients and the other staff members. Some of the tactics she uses is routine and schedule to break down the patients to a point where
Overall, Nurse Ratched uses her authority to its maximum potential through her numerous strategies and tactics to obtain full and complete control over the ward. Many of her tactics do mirror real world tactics that institutions use to control the population. Based off of the Al Jazeera and Vice videos we watched, modern day rehabilitation centers and mental institutions strongly resemble prison institutions, not just in the way they look, but in the way they operate. Totalitarian governments also use many of these tactics for the very same goals: to control the population. Even in modern day institutions like Woodward Academy, the school implements rules and regulations as a means of establishing discipline, controlling the students from acting like animals, and to make the school look good in the eyes of possible customers. Overall, these tactics and strategies that Nurse Ratched uses are not unique to her and the ward, they are common characteristics that can be found in numerous