Power In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

cuckoos nest paper

Alex Lola
D band
Willett
Don’t stand back, fight back; symbols of power, oppression, and resistance in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey is a novel about a man by the name of Randle McMurphy, who, when sent to a mental ward, challenge all the authority within it and forces the other patients to take a deeper look at the way they are being treated at the ward. This novel is one which brings to light the unfair authority which not only exists within the hospital, but within society at the time. It satires the way gay are shunned and looked down on, how people who are a bit different get out casted and mistreated, it even dares to comment on the overwhelming power that one
When McMurphy first enters the ward, Harding holds a false position of power, “head of the patient council”. However, this proves to be nothing but a title when McMurphy is at first not allowed to see him without an appointment because he is too busy, but then chats with him later, despite his “busyness”. Along with this false position of power, Harding even goes as far as to argue that nurse Ratched is not only not a horrible tyrant, but even “unselfish as the wind” (58). Later on in the conversation, though, Harding comes to admit that she is indeed all the things McMurphy has called her and accused her of being, but that “No one’s dared come out and say it before” (59). This just goes to show that enough oppression can make one believe anything, and even argue a point of view he knows to be wrong. Harding represents the run-of-the-mill uninformed citizen, the average Joe who spends his life unwilling to ever speak his true thoughts. He will even pretend he does not think these things, due to the fear instilled in him by an unfair tyrant. This constitutes as borderline brainwash. Nurse Ratched, like many of the power figures in the world today, uses fear as well as gifting of false power, in an effort to control her ward. Harding is one of the suckers that buys into it, as many people do. He is used to bring forward the concept of ignorance due to fear instilled by a larger
Throughout the whole novel McMurphy continues to question the nurse’s authority. At first he gets rejected by the other patients, but slowly he begins to win them over in his fight against the control over them. Before he came however, the patients had no idea to the extent that they were being manipulated. Kesey uses him to represent the importance of a resistance movement to an oppressed community. Throughout the whole world people constantly get oppressed and controlled and taken advantage of to the pleasure of there oppressors. They become mere pawns and get used to gain more and more power, and then get discarded if they prove to be of no use. Any lack of resistance keeps them from even thinking of breaking the chains around their wrists. That is why someone has to stand up, and shout that he will not stand for it. If but one person does, the rest will follow. McMurphy symbolizes that person. He empowers the people around him, and lets them know not to put up with the things that bother them, that they do not need to be trapped inside the ward. In fact, he has a real problem that “you bitch for weeks on end how you cant stand this place, cant stand the nurse or anything about her and all the time you ain’t committed… you’re not exactly the everyday man but your not nuts” (168). McMurphy