Kesey
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest seemed to have several underlying debates and issues that Kesey was grasping at through his characters and plot lines. The one that grabbed and held my attention the strongest was the one being portrayed through McMurphy and Nurse Ratched. These two characters throughout the novel can be representing numerous different items. For instance, the nurse could symbolize feminism, power, or societies’ leaders. Personally, I interpreted the conflict between the nurse and McMurphy as a struggle over women in power over men. Throughout the novel, McMurphy constantly states in one form or another how he can not understand how she has so much control over all in the ward. It appears that the nurse serving as a power figure instead of a thing of sexuality truly irks McMurphy. Kesey could have written a novel of a man in charge of a men’s ward or a woman in control of a ward containing both sexes, but instead he choose and focused on how one woman was in charge of several men, comprising of patients and workers alike.
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December 10th, 2006 at 9:16 am
Good thinking, I totally agree with you. I feel that there is definitely a strong conflict between McMurphy and the nurse because she has so much power as a woman. McMurphy is not used to being controlled by women, and he doesn’t like being under her control.