So for the past few class days, we have been primarily discussing Chief's role as narrator, distinguishing reality from Chief's perspective, and the symbol/concept of the fog. However, after reading tonight, I could really see how intense the power struggle is between Big Nurse and McMurphy. To start, I think that this is a really complicated relationship; I feel that Big Nurse has brainwashed everyone into following her while McMurphy is looking to gain supporters and change the status quo. This is shown especially during McMurphy's encounter with Harding earlier in the novel, who admits that he is the only person who actually was brave enough to say something about Big Nurse without taking back his words later.
The big battle this last chapter concerned McMurphy wanting to watch the World Series and switch the TV time. To his expectation, the nurse disallows this because she doesn't want "turmoil by the switch of routines" (118). While some of the members agree with McMurphy, there are other members who would rather not change routines because: "[Big Nurse] always has the capacity to make things worse for them" (121). I feel that these members have been in for way too long and are losing their ability to make self-decisions.
Overall, this is a large debate between the Inside and Outside. Since the nurse has power to work both in the asylum and live outside, she is really experiencing and living life. However, her desire to keep the Insiders on a strict routine may be good at first, but I think it is overall detrimental to them; much of life revolves around spontaneous actions. What do you guys think about this power struggle?
In class we also discussed McMurphy as a leader and a sort of revolution brewing on the Inside. What I later realized was that McMurphy is excellent at manipulating power. He has become a leader of the inmates? by being deceitful of Big Nurse and other staff. In the section where he tells Big Nurse that he was never given any green clothes, he gave himself more power than the black boys had in that situation. If you think about it,that's a hard thing to do because he is not working there and is not supposed to have any authority.
ReplyDeleteAlso, it seems to me that some of these people have been made to go crazy because they are living in so much of a game. They think that there is so much strategy that is needed in their everyday lives and I think that that could make a person go crazy.