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<title> 'Big Nurse' </title>
The action in Ken Kesey's novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" takes place in a psychiatric ward, which is controlled by the very strict Nurse Ratched. The novel introduces its readers to many interesting personalities, and it deals with the nurse's struggle to stay in charge of the ward. In this essay I will make a presentation of Nurse Ratched and describe how Ken Kesey creates her character in the novel. 
	Nurse Ratched, or Big Nurse, as she is called, is the head supervisor of the ward. She is a woman in her late middle-ages, who has an incredible power over the people in the hospital, both patients and those working there. Everything that happens in the ward in under her control. The nurse always wears a strict white uniform, as if to hide away all signs of her being a woman. What cannot be concealed, however, is her large bosom, witch seems to fit very badly with her otherwise so orderly looks. The power that she holds is not wielded by brusque words, accusations and open dictatorship, but she is always smiling, calm and cold, and she gets her will through by polite words and insinuations. She makes the environment in the ward unfriendly and tensed by encouraging the patients to write down anything odd about eachother in her log book. These notes are then discussed and used to suppress the patients on regular meetings. Her most powerful weapons, however, are the electroshock therapy and lobotomy. 
The novel mainly deals with the conflict between Nurse Ratched and the radical R.P. McMurphy, who tries to break Nurse Ratched's control. McMurphy argues with her and irritates her in different ways, and the struggle between them is more and more seen as a battle between inhuman restrictions and liberation. In the beginning of the book Nurse Ratched would never show that she was upset in any way: "She walks around with that same doll smile crimped between her chin and her nose and that same calm whir coming from her eyes, but down inside of her she's tense as steel." (p.30) i. As McMurphy changes things around in the ward, however, she finds it more and more difficult to control her emotions. The nurse is portrayed as a 'ball-cutter', which means that she points to the weaknesses of the male members of the ward, and thereby makes them more insecure. This is clearly shown at a meeting when Harding, a homosexual with lots of marital problems, is discussed. After this meeting R.P. McMurphy, who is just admitted to the ward from a prison, makes a bet that he can get the best out of Nurse Ratched. He says: "I'm a gambler and I'm not in the habit of losing. And I have never seen a woman I thought was more man than me," (p.68). Another passage where her capacity for degrading men is obvious appears later in the book when Billy, the insecure, stammering, and rather childlike man, has finally lost his virginity. In just a few words the nurse diminishes Billy's newly gained confidence by threatening to tell his mother about what has happened. 
	We get to know about the events that take place at the ward through a first person narrator, Chief Bromden. He is a big Indian who has been at the ward for several years, and who pretends to be deaf and dumb. This makes him a perfect narrator of the story, since Nurse Ratched and the other people working at the ward are not very careful with what they say and do in his presence. Chief thinks that Nurse Ratched is supported by, the 'combine', a mechanical system that aims at suppressing individuals: "it's not just the Big Nurse by herself, but it's the whole combine, the nation-wide combine that's the really big force, and the nurse is just a high-ranking official for them." (p.165). Although Chief has insight in what is happening, it is sometimes hard to know what is true and what is only his own paranoia. Everything we are told about Nurse Ratched and the combine, is coloured by the way Chief sees things. Sometimes it is very obvious that the events that are described are nothing but his own fantasies, but as he says himself: "it's the truth even if it didn't happen" (p.13). We never really get to know Nurse Ratched, how she thinks and feels and why she acts the way she does, but we see her as the robotic 'monster ' as which she is described by Chief Bromden. She is an evil woman and it is shown both in her horrible way of treating her fellow human beings, and in the dreamlike sequences when Chief imagines her as a horrible creature whose only goal is to suppress people around her. 
	As we can see, Nurse Ratched has a very important role in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest, since her incredible power and her struggle to maintain control is visible throughout the book. She can be seen as a symbol of the restrictions and the suppressing in society, which must be fought by each individual, but which cannot be beaten.
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