Examples Of Power In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Power is the ability to stimulate productive action. The foundation for power is based on the nature of the interaction between a staff member who seeks to influence another staff member or group. There are those who use their powers in a positive way, while others use their powers in a negative way. According to William Gadois, “power doesn’t corrupt people, people corrupt power.” In 1962, Ken Kesey wrote a fictional novel named “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”. The story was set in an Oregon psychiatric hospital, the narrative serves as a study of the institutional processes and the human mind. Nurse Ratched, the antagonist, is a head nurse who wanted complete power. She was the type of leader who used her power in a negative way. Legitimate power is an individual based power that is derived from authority. It is the reflection of an assignment or duty position allocated to an individual in an organization,
Coercive power can also be described as the authority or the power that is dependent on fear, suppression of free will, and/or punishment or threat. Those patients who refused to answer Ratched’s questions or defied her, were given one of three punishments. The first punishment was that the patient was deemed as potentially assaultive and would then be sent to the psych ward. The second punishment was that the patients would be exposed to shock therapy. The third and last punishment was that the patients would undergo a lobotomy which is a surgical procedure in which the nerve pathways in a lobe or lobes of the brain are severed from those in other areas. Ratched being the head nurse meant that she had connections inside and outside the hospital, which in a way gave her the power to dish out whatever punishment she saw