The Use of Manipulation; One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
The Use of Manipulation: One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
Throughout Ken Kesey's novel, “One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest,” the use of manipulation is a re-occurring motif. Manipulation is defined as 'shrewd of devious management. Manipulation is put into context by how the character's use it. The first character to master it is the antagonist Nurse Ratchet. She uses it to manipulate patients to manage her mechanically structured ward. The other character is the (antagonist, protagonist?) patient McMurphy. He on the other hand manipulates people to help them grow or gain money. These two characters also go head to head with the power of deceptive manipulation as their weapons.
Nurse Ratchet is the boss of the ward, in which the events of the novel take place. Her role is to make everything in the ward that goes on have 'therapeutic value'. What she really uses this excuse for is to run her ward as mechanically and robotic-ally calculated as she can so all her patients will stay sick, immasculized, in her clutches and best of all not fight back. One method of her manipulation techniques is her smile. According to the protagonist Chief Bromden, Miss Ratched stretches her smile into whatever expression/attitude fits the situation shes using it for, “So she really lets herself go and her painted smile twists, stretches to an open snarl, and she blows up bigger and bigger, big as a tractor, so big I can smell the machinery inside the way you smell a motor pulling too big a load ... all the patients start coming out of the dorms to check on what's the hullabaloo, and she has to change back before she's caught in the shape of her hideous real self. By the time the patients get their eyes rubbed to where they can halfway see what the racket's about, all they see is the head nurse, smiling and calm and cold and usual, telling the black boys they'd best not stand in a group gossiping when it is a Monday...”(5) Through this passage, we see the Nurse change her smile to
Throughout Ken Kesey's novel, “One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest,” the use of manipulation is a re-occurring motif. Manipulation is defined as 'shrewd of devious management. Manipulation is put into context by how the character's use it. The first character to master it is the antagonist Nurse Ratchet. She uses it to manipulate patients to manage her mechanically structured ward. The other character is the (antagonist, protagonist?) patient McMurphy. He on the other hand manipulates people to help them grow or gain money. These two characters also go head to head with the power of deceptive manipulation as their weapons.
Nurse Ratchet is the boss of the ward, in which the events of the novel take place. Her role is to make everything in the ward that goes on have 'therapeutic value'. What she really uses this excuse for is to run her ward as mechanically and robotic-ally calculated as she can so all her patients will stay sick, immasculized, in her clutches and best of all not fight back. One method of her manipulation techniques is her smile. According to the protagonist Chief Bromden, Miss Ratched stretches her smile into whatever expression/attitude fits the situation shes using it for, “So she really lets herself go and her painted smile twists, stretches to an open snarl, and she blows up bigger and bigger, big as a tractor, so big I can smell the machinery inside the way you smell a motor pulling too big a load ... all the patients start coming out of the dorms to check on what's the hullabaloo, and she has to change back before she's caught in the shape of her hideous real self. By the time the patients get their eyes rubbed to where they can halfway see what the racket's about, all they see is the head nurse, smiling and calm and cold and usual, telling the black boys they'd best not stand in a group gossiping when it is a Monday...”(5) Through this passage, we see the Nurse change her smile to