In Ken Kesey's novel, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, he develops two extremely powerful characters. The first one we are introduced to is Big Nurse, the head nurse in an insane asylum. She is alpha on the floor and no one even dared to think to cross here. But this all changes once a new member, Mr. R.P. McMurphy enters into the ward. He is a big grizzly of a man who KNOWS he is numero uno. Throughout the entire book these two character struggle to have the most power in the hospital.
"That nurse ain't some kinda monster chicken, buddy, what she is is a ball cutter...people who try to make you weak so they can get you to toe the line and follow their rules..." (57).
Throughout ht majority of the book, I believe that McMurphy is the more powerful presence. He is the new cool kid on the block with an overwhelming presence. The other patients see his charisma and confidence and feed off it. They try to become more like him and to be friend him and trust to lose all trust in Big Nurse, leading to the self sign out of nearly all the acute patients at the end of the novel. "She couldn't rule with her old power like she used to anymore...She was losing her patients one after the other. Harding signed out and was picked up by his wife and George transferred to a different ward..."(269).
The attitude and persona McMurphy carries is all man. Big, strong, and powerful. He is not criticizing of the patients like how Big Nurse is. He encourages the men to play, gamble, and to strive for Independence. So though it was never his intended job, McMurphy is the more therapeutic for the men. The hospital's mission is to make the men feel like they are in normal society again, but they only feel this feeling once McMurphy comes in. He has them play games, takes them fishing, sneaks girls in during the night. What else is more real life than mischief!?
Though McMurphy won many battles, Big Nurse did win the war. After the girls were discovered in the ward, she sent McMurphy up for a lobotomy. He couldn't recover from this and in essence became a completely different unrecongnizable person.
"' That ain't him.'
'Nothing like him.'
'How stupid does she think we are?'
'Oh they done a pretty good job though. ...they got the broken nose and crazy scar-even the sideburns.'
'Sure they can do things like [that]...but they can't do that look. There's nothing in the face.'" (269).
Big Nurse had a mission to strip all the power from McMurphy, and she finally had.
