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Student 3
The “War” in Ward
Differing views of life in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
A person’s mood, opinions, and state of mind are based on their point of view. When
someone encounters conflict, they can see it as game, with room for laughter, fun and happiness,
or as a war, a life or death struggle ending in sorrow. In Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the
Cuckoo’s Nest, life on the ward is a contest, a constant struggle between Nurse Ratched and
McMurphy. These two characters have radically different viewpoints, and influence the ward’s
other patients to see the world in different ways. While the nurse treats everything as a war,
needing to dominate over the patients, McMurphy treats life as a game, inviting the patients to
join in and bring back their own humanity and ultimately find happiness.
The nurse runs the ward as if life were a war, and she causes the men to think this way as
well. Her background is as an army nurse, and she sees things through the lens of her war
experiences. A nurse from a different ward tells McMurphy and the chief that one problem with
the asylum is its staff of “Army Nurses, trying to run an army hospital. They are a little sick
themselves” (234). Army Nurses have all experienced the horrors of war, which made them a
little sick, and these experiences become a huge influence on how they deal with others. They try
to “run an army hospital” because they never fully recovered from the war and still project it on
the world around them. The nurse’s “reign”—her network and plan for domination of the ward,
is based off of the idea of hate, which is war-like and violent. She chose her staff after a long
selection process, which the chief describes, saying, “She appraises them and their hate for a
month or so, then lets them go because they don’t hate enough. When she finally gets the three
she wants—gets them one at a time over a number of years, weaving them into her plan and her
network—she’s damn positive they hate enough to be capable” (31). This shows her precise