One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Essay

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One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Part III The hierarchy of needs; a pyramid of the different requirements people have to meet to reach self actualization. If the basic needs aren’t met then the psychological needs won’t be obtained, if the psychological needs aren’t acquired then self actualization can’t be achieved. In the novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Nurse Ratched and the ward itself are inhibiting the patients from fulfilling self actualization by depriving them of their psychological needs. The ward is not functional and will not be effective in “curing” the patients because the patients are not able to meet their psychological needs through intimate relationships and meaningful friendships. Before McMurphy was admitted to the ward, the patients …show more content…
Sound of matched cylinders” (Kesey 33). This expresses the patient's submissiveness before McMurray had an effect on them. The narrator is suggesting that they all have a specific role and they are parts of a machine working in perfect order. In fact, “order” is prevalent throughout this novel, referring to Nurse Ratched obsession with order and control. Nurse Ratched’s goal is to beat every patient into submission so she can have complete control over them. Following McMurphy’s arrival, he manages to make significant changes in the patients but it still isn’t enough to get them to make meaningful relationships. This is due to the fact that no matter what McMurphy does, they are still constrained in the walls of the ward and being watched by Nurse Ratched and the other workers. “All twenty of them, raising not just for watching TV, but against the Big Nurse, against her trying to send McMurphy to Disturbed, against the way she’s talked and acted and beat them down for years” (Kesey 140). This shows McMurphy is starting to make a difference because before he was admitted to the ward, the rest of the patients would never oppose
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