1

Daria Tchernova
Essex Period 1
English 9
12 March 2020

Fear Allows for Manipulation and Order

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey, portrays how fear allows leaders, like
Nurse Ratched, to remove the individuality of people so they are easier to manipulate and mold
into society. Everyone including McMurphy and Nurse Ratched has flaws, but are perceived
completely differently in society. Fog symbolically represents the fear that the patients have for
Nurse Ratched; McMurphy’s arrival displays how rebellion of this fear-lead system leads to the
disruption of an orderly society. A final victory for Nurse Ratched is the lobotomy, in which
McMurphy, a champion of freedom, is at last under control. His true freedom is only achieved
after death.
Zoomorphism allows Kesey to portray how patients are controlled by both the Combine
and Nurse Ratched. Bromden narrates how the black boys hunt down the patients like pointer
dogs, ¨… but the dog keeps sniffing and circling, louder and closer.¨ (Kesey 12). Parallelism is
also shown between Nurse Ratched and a big wolf. The ward stimulates natural order in which
the patients, represented by rabbits, fear the wolf, the leader of the pack. The patients, like
prey, are kept in place by their fear of standing up against the leader. "All of us in here are
rabbits of varying ages and degrees, hippity-hopping through our Walt Disney world" (61). No
matter their disability or social level, they all have a fundamental fear of the nurse. McMurphy,
a symbol of rebellion of the system, points out the obvious during his initial arrival. He knows
that the patients are puppets of Nurse Ratched and uses the analogy of a pecking party, “‘Oh, a
peckin’ party can wipe out the whole flock... The only way to prevent it… So’s they can’t see.’”
(55) This analogy depicts the system working as the patients remain blind to it. Most of the
patients are voluntarily kept as blind puppets because they are afraid of their own flaws in
society; Nurse Ratched keeps herself in control by taking advantage of the fears the patients
have of themselves.
At first, McMurphy opposes the system with humor. He opens up a world of new
possibilities for the patients, an escape from the fear-controlled system put in place by Nurse
Ratched; laughter is a motif of freedom in the ward. Patients are deprived of emotions, and he
helps them experience it again. With each of the patient’s sanity and voices coming back to
them, McMurphy is really the best therapeutic source. This, of course, causes disruption to
Nurse Ratched’s perfected system. Although McMurphy is physically stronger than Nurse
Ratched, she still holds greater power than he does. At first, he rebels without a change in
emotion from Nurse Ratched. She believes he will eventually submit to her power, like other
 2

patients. However, she overestimates her control over him. Most patients are held in the ward
because they fear themselves and what society thinks about them, however, McMurphy is
actually the opposite. He sees no flaws in himself, this way his confidence overpowers the
system and inspires other patients. So, although McMurphy is stronger than Nurse Ratched, she
still controls what happens to him in the ward. His rebellion eventually leads to his lobotomy,
which symbolizes Nurse Ratched finally constructing him as an ideal man for society.
McMurphy understands that he cannot rebel or fight against the system; no matter
what he does physically, she is still in control. The idea of size comparison is also played out
when Bromden steps out of the fog to talk with McMurphy. “My mother got twice his size…
Bigger than Papa and me together…” (186). Kesey shows parallelism between Nurse Ratched
and Bromden’s mother to display that physical strength doesn’t determine the amount of
power and strength in society somebody has. After realizing this, McMurphy tries to lay low,
but the impact he created on the ward and its patients is irreversible. For example, Cheswick’s
irrational confidence leads him to kill himself. Cheswick’s character is shown to be the opposite
of McMurphy´s. McMurphy is a natural leader in the ward; asserting his dominance as soon as
he was admitted to the institution. On the other hand, Cheswick is the rabbit in the nature of
the ward. He is powerless and unable to get others to follow him, he cannot face the fear
imposed on him by Nurse Ratched. McMurphy’s natural confidence and fearlessness opposes
the weak confidence shown by Cheswick during the meeting. “Each time a man looked away
and refused to back him up, and the panic in his face doubled.” (150). This shows that, unlike
McMurphy, Cheswick fears rejection, making him seem unlikable by others. McMurphy inspires
others to let go of their fears, that way, seen as heroic.
Nurse Ratched and her staff, who are seen as flawless in society, really have a sadistic
nature hidden from others, but exposed to the patients. Nurse Ratched maintains a perfect
appearance and will go to any limits to preserve her perfection. The only moment when she
releases her true emotions is when McMurphy chokes her. Before this, patients would see her
as an emotionless fear-generating machine instead of a human. Both McMurphy and Nurse
Ratched are outcasts in society, but only Nurse Ratched cares enough to mask hers. She wants
to appear as someone in control of the patients. She believes others won’t see her as a leader
because she is a woman, so she tries to hide her femininity. Nurse Ratched maintains manly by
not showing any emotions, “Precise, automatic gesture. Her face is smooth, calculated, and
precision-made...” (11). McMurphy, however, embraces his flaws, which makes him appear
heroic and confident to the weak patients. Likewise, the public relations man covers his real self
with a mask to make him and the ward seem ideal to the outside society. Only Bromden can
see through this mask, the sadistic requirements somebody needs to have to work in a place
like this. “‘A man that would want to run away from a place as nice as this, why, there’d be
something wrong with him.’” (112) The public relations man depicts the ward as perfect, but
 3

everything has its imperfection. Bromden illustrates that everyone has flaws, some try to cover
it, like Nurse Ratched and the Public Relations man. Others, like the patients, accept theirs.
Fog symbolizes the terror patients have for Nurse Ratched, which is the agent in
maintaining the system of the ward. When somebody is in the fog, their view of reality alters;
some prefer to stay in the fog to avoid problems in the real world, seeing it as a safe place. In
the beginning, when Bromden pretends to be deaf and dumb, he hears secrets people won’t
say otherwise. Prior to McMurphys and Bromdens friendship, Bromden was in the fog, being
evidently controlled by Nurse Ratched. Bromden’s willingness to ignore all the cruelty
happening in the ward led him to be blindly controlled. During the scene in which the patients
were voting, they symbolically reached their hands out of the fog, from McMurphy’s
inspiration. Bromden reaches as well, the ultimate signal of rebellion, causing the people in
power to question if Bromden is really deaf and dumb.
With McMurphy introducing freedom to the patients, he causes a disturbance in the
perfect illusion of the ward. Along with Cheswick, other patients become aware of emotions
that were previously stripped by Nurse Ratched. Out of the fog, the patients become braver
and are able to speak up for themselves. However, Nurse Ratched’s influence is never gone and
always haunts them. Candy and McMurphy are both symbols of freedom. Candy allows Billy
Bibbit to express his love, of which he is very deprived. When Billy Bibbit slept with Candy, he
temporarily resists Nurse Ratched’s control. His resistance quickly comes to an end when she
reminds him of how his mother would be disappointed. That shows that no matter how much
effort McMurphy puts into changing the patient’s view toward the nurse, she will always be
one step ahead of him. The patients aren’t normal, they all have problems, and Nurse Ratched
is aware of that. She uses those fears to control people into following her order. If all patients
were as fearless as McMurphy, rebellion would ignite, as they would also be aware of Nurse
Ratched’s cruel treatments. His lobotomy represents the nurse’s final victory over him.
McMurphy, a champion of freedom, is at last free after Bromden kills him.
Kesey shows the consequences of disrupting order within a society since it cannot be
preserved without having people fear the leader. Kesey uses zoomorphism, motifs, and
symbolism to show how Nurse Ratched and her staff put fear into the patients. McMurphy,
symbolically representing freedom, changes how patients see Nurse Ratched, loosening the
amount of order in the system. Bromden is released from the fog through his friendship with
McMurphy. This break in the system displays reality being opened up to the patients. Both
McMurphy and Nurse Ratched are outcasts, having flaws in society. McMurphy, unlike Nurse
Ratched, accepts his flaws and embraces them. Nurse Ratched is the opposite, she tries hiding
her flaws to appear more machine-like, to make it easier to place fear into the patients. When
the patient's individuality is removed, symbolized by the lobotomy and other methods of
normalizing people, Nurse Ratched can finally construct them as a flawless figure in society.
 4

Word Count: 1595

Works Cited
Pratt, John Clark. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. New York: Penguin Books, 1996.
Print.