In part 2
of the book one flew over the cuckoo’s nest we see the reaction of the big
nurse for mcmurphys outrageous actions about voting for the baseball game. The big
nurse is very angry that she lost control of the men by the influence of
mcmurphy so she uses that anger and her position of power to decide the future
of mcmurphy. Everyone in the ward is intimidated by the big nurse, including
the staff members and when they suggest to remove mcmurphy from her ward everyone
things is a great idea but as soon as the big nurse disagrees everyone will do
what she says. The big nurse also knows that
mcmurphy has already ‘damaged’ the other men by making them more confident
with themselves so she has already lost power of them mentally and if mcmurphy is transferred she is
admitting defeat and that will give the men even more confidence. The big nurse
is also very smart and because she is angry with mcmurphy she knows that she is
able to control his future and that she can keep him as long as she wants. The big
nurse uses her power of authority to control the ward and everyone in it, everyone
knows this except mcmurphy, but later on when the patience are taken to the
pool he learns of the power the nurses have so immediately he adjust his
behaviour and he actually started doing useful things and be extremely nice, and
this is exactly why the nurse didn’t want to send him to another ward because
she knew that at some point he would figure out that she decides how long he
stays and he would change his behaviour. we see how everyone is affected by the amount
of power someone has and that people will listen to authorities if it is
beneficial to themselves
.
The way
that mcmurphy acts until he learns the power that the nurse has reminds me of
how some people have acted towards me when i had the power to decide their
future. One of my friends learned that i worked at goodlife so she started to
buy me lunch and to help me with assignments and school stuff but i knew that
she was acting weird so i asked her why she’s doing all does things and she
asked me if i could get her an interview because she also wanted to work there
so i said yes and when she had the interview and i put in a good word for her
she stopped doing all the extra things. I really think it was unnecessary for
her to do all the extra things because i would have help her anyway, but i
automatically saw how people act differently when they need something and
someone else has power over their
future.
I also
think that the nurse’s power can be seen to represent the people that work for
the government like presidents or governors. These power figures that we have
in our society take the final say on what is decided and that’s why companiess
or people bribe government figures so that the power figure change the laws to
do what the company want because otherwise company would not give money to the government
for no reason, its only based on the company’s own interests.
