Similarities Between One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest And Mcmurphy

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a novel description of the events they took place in a psychiatric facility, which emphasizes about hospital protocols, human behaviors, and managerial powers. Comparing McMurphy and the big Nurse known as ratched in this novel, both represents two different kinds of human characteristics struggling for power in a mental institution in their own management style.
Patrick McMurphy is a new patient in the treatment ward, he was on admission for the claim of insanity as a means of avoiding a community service for the crime he committed. He is entertaining, loving and always advocating for other patients in the attempts to quash the fear the patients have towards Big Nurse by rallying them to oppose her commanding …show more content…
McMurphy thinks his ability to engage Big Nurse fearlessly gives him a leeway to be the leader of all patients. As such, he assumes that he has the right to seek permission from the nurse to watch World Series in the ward, but Big Nurse denies McMurphy the privilege to watch the ward’s televisison. On the other hand, Big Nurse manipulates the patients who fail to submit to her orders by threatening them with a punitive treatment plan that involved one undergoing an electroshock therapy or a lobotomy. She has controls over the patients in the facility and has the ability to decide how long the patient stays in the …show more content…
Big Nurse is patronizing because she exercises absolute authority on the patients with a mental health condition. She uses fear to dominate the men and make sure that they co-operate with the facility’s policies or they risk facing dire consequences. For instance, Big Nurse acknowledges that patients on the Acute side fear the Chronic side and as such, she threatens the offensive patients to be submissive to the facility’s rule or end up in the Chronic side. The fear Big Nurse instills in the patients makes Bibbit to commit suicide by cutting his throat, because she threatens to tell Bibbit’s mother about his indiscretion with a prostitute which was piloted by McMurphy.
In conclusion, the comparison between McMurphy and Big Nurse shows that the two display a similar trait of wanting to dominate over others and advance their initiatives. It is plausible to infer that their similarity generates the contrast between them, where Big Nurse wants to assert her authority to patients like McMurphy. In response, McMurphy engineers a reactionary force that opposes Big Nurse’s motives, making him seem rebellious. Therefore, McMurphy and Big Nurse do not get along because each wants to prove to the other that he/she is