MachineThe Nurse runs the Ward like a machine, as described by the Chief. She insists that everything be done her way and if a patient resists her rules, then they will be made an example of. She also runs the Ward like a machine because of the special schedule she makes for the patients such as medication time, therapy time even when they can interact with others and cannot. She also runs the Ward like a machine because she can control who works for her and who does not. She chooses the doctor who is the weakest because she knows she can easily get him to listen to her and get him to do things that she feels is necessary and he is unsure about.
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Manipulation of Patients Fears and InsecuritiesShe maintains her control over the ward by manipulating the patients with fears and wants. At the so called, "therapy sessions" Nurse Ratched reads the secrets others have spilled about their friends. The patients are tricked into thinking it is therapeutic to rat each other out, but McMurphy makes them think otherwise. McMurphy calls these therapy sessions "pecking parties" because the Nurse manipulates them to think it is beneficial to their mental state when it is not. An example of this is when she says ""Am I to take it that there's not a man among you that has committed some act that he has never admitted?" She reached in the basket for the log book. "Must we go over past history?" (page 50).
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Manipulation of Patients Fears and Insecurities (cont) She asks the men a question so they are guilted into answering it, releasing all of their secrets. She also manipulates them at the end of the book when McMurphy is in disturbed and says he never does anything for anyone else unless he is benefitted. She tried to manipulate the patients because she was unable to control McMurphy as seen on page 265, " ...I am told, quite a few other benefits without having paid a nickel.. Quite like a fox, I must say." Here she was trying to get the patients to turn against McMurphy so they would be on her side so she could have full control under the Ward again.
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MasculinityThe Nurse also controls the men on the Ward by taking away their masculinity, both physically and emotionally. She emasculates them at the group therapy just as she manipulates them because she brings up the patients wife's and information that is told in confidence is told to everyone. After the pecking party McMurphy says to Harding, ""No, 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, to follow their rules, to live like they want you to. And the best way to do this, to get you to knuckle under, is to weaken you by gettin' you where it hurts the worst" (page 60). He is explaining to Harding that the Nurse knows how to make the men feel below her and less manly. Another example of how the nurse control the men by emasculating them is by giving procedures that do not allow them to "feel manly." Which is seen throughout the book and specifically at the end when McMurphy is given a lobotomy and is turned into a vegetable.
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