Blog #2 Cuckoo's Nest

Ratched's Mental Health
Nurse Ratched is one of the main character in the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, she is a formal army nurse and works at the mental hospital where the novel takes place. Although she is staff and works to "help" the patients, she is crazier than any patient at the ward.She is obsessed with control and having everyone being under her rule. "Please understand, I appreciate the way you've taken it upon yourself to orient with the other patients on the ward, but everything in its own good time, Mr. McMurry. I'm sorry to interrupt you and Mr. Bromden, but you do understand: everyone...must follow the rules." (25 Kesey). She does everything in her power to manipulate the patients and doctors at the ward to insure everything is under her absolute rule; in society, there are things one can control and there are things out of one's control. In the little society of The Combine, Nurse Ratched controls all things, obsessing over every little detail, freaking out if things were done completely done her way. When McMurphy does not conform to her ways of "helping" the patients, she tries to put him under her control by shocking him and it failed, she tries to do it again..and again.."I tried to talk him into playing along with her so's to get out of the treatments, but he just laughed and told me Hell, all they was doing was charging his battery for him, free for nothing." (290 Kesey).  When patients at a mental institute start "playing along" with the staff, there's something seriously off. "Normal" people are usually the ones who play along with the insane to try and help them, not the other way around. The patients that are in the ward are not nearly as insane and sadistic as the nurse, they understand Nurse Ratched's obsession and they understand how to behave to the best of their benefits. Nurse Ratched, however, does not see this and is proud with herself of the "control" she has over the patients, that is, except for McMurphy. Albert Einstein's famous quote, "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results" also corresponds very closely to Nurse Ratched's insanity in this case. Her control is a crazy obsession, she is willing to put others through torture just to achieve what she wants.Nurse Ratched’s insanity is personal, she is bitter about her own life and has lost much of her humanity, through power and control she seeks the same for her patients, for her own entertainment as well as to make herself feel better.