One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Battles

In the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, there are several conflicts, but the main one is between Nurse Ratched and McMurphy.

Nurse Ratched is in charge of the mental hospital and makes it her business to know everything that is going on around the ward so that she can stay in control of it all. She has the upper hand in this battle because she has power over the patents of the ward. She gains this power through things such as the therapy meeting where she purposefully draws out the faults in the patents around her to show her domination over them. During one scene she manipulates the other patents into harassing Harding. The narrator, Chief Bromden, describes it as, “For forty-five minutes they had been chopping a man to pieces, almost as if they enjoyed it, shooting questions at him…questions and insinuations till now they feel bad about it and they don’t want to be made more uncomfortable by being near him.”(Kesey 54).

Nurse Ratched also has the ability to send the patents to the disturbed ward. This is a disadvantage to McMurphy because he has to try to bring her down without displaying any behavior that she could use against him; such as cursing, fighting with the other patents or making a big deal out of anything. Because of this he has to be very careful with the way he acts around her and has to try to unnerve and pester her without showing any questionable behavior. During one scene he and the other patents manage to completely aggravate and upset her. To protest being un-allowed to watch the Super-bowl, they purposely leave their work and sit in front of the blank TV screen. “And we’re all sitting there lined up in front of the blanked-out TV set, watching the gray screen just like we could see the baseball game clear as day, and she’s ranting and screaming behind us.” (Kesey 128). This drives Nurse Ratched crazy because she hates not being in control, but as Chief Bromden comments, “She’s lost this battle here today, but it’s a minor battle in a big war that she’s been winning and that she’ll go on winning.” (Kesey 101).