She thrives for the power she has been given and only wishes to expand her power more and more over the institution. Not only over the men in the institute that are patients, but the staff as well must strictly amend to her rules and regulations. She maintains her power by the strategic use of shame and guilt. Wanting only for herself and thinking only for herself and the many ways to empower everyone around her.
Nurse Ratched, the all powerful is defeated though, despite all of her grand schemes and actions against a certain patient named Randal P. McMurphy. He is taken in by the institution and quickly picks up on Nurse Ratched's ways of overpowering the rest of the patients. He decides to then overpower her by tuning in to every weakness she may have and fights her totalitarian power in the institution. At the end of the novel he rips open Nurse Ratched's shirt to reveal the one feminine quality that she possesses. The only thing the men of the institution could relate her to as a woman, and she then loses and never regains the power she has taken so long to