One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest Power Analysis

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Much of society views power as unacceptable. Power has been used throughout history in order to benefit a single individual. This has been predominantly seen with rulers, however in the past century it is evident in any authoritative position. Machiavelli explains it as “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Absolute power leads to corruption, rational decision making occurs when people come together in unity. When an individual receives all the power they tend to make irrational bias decisions. Machiavelli's description of power is correct because when an individual has absolute power it leads to corruption. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey undoubtedly displays the idea of corrupted power. Throughout the novel, Nurse Ratched the …show more content…
The Stanford Prison Experiment was conducted in 1971 by Philip Zimbardo of Stanford University. Zimbardo wanted to see the effect of Mundane realism, or the ability to mirror the real world as much as possible. The experiment showed mundane realism by getting ordinary men and putting them into an environment of prison life. By observing how the guards respond to power and inmates captivity, we can get a closer look on how abuse of power leads to corruption. The results were astonishing researches had to end the experiment after the sixth day. The men played so deeply into their roles that their behavior and entire personalities began to alter into extreme models of their specific role. Their roles caused them to do things they never thought capable of themselves, guards mentally and physically punished inmates. Zimbardo gives us a detailed explanation of why this occurred. “The study makes a very profound point about the power of situations — that situations affect us much more than we think, that human behavior is much more under the control of subtle situational forces, in some cases very trivial ones, like rules and roles and symbols and uniforms, and much less under the control of things like character and personality traits than we ordinarily think as determining behavior” (Zimbardo). The quote shows the true side of human nature when giving power to authority. Most people believe human behavior is based off personality traits. However as Zimbardo shows us, behavior is not linked to personality traits, instead the power given in certain situations affect humans more. A Mock guard describes what he felt when he was given power. “I really thought I was incapable of this kind of behavior, I was really dismayed that…I could act in a manner so absolutely unaccustomed to anything I would ever really dream of doing.”(Mock Guard). The Mock
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