Great Characters: Nurse Ratched (“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”)

In the 1975 movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (screenplay by Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman, based on a novel by Ken Kesey and the play by Dale Wasserman) there are many standout characters including, of course, Jack Nicholson who won an Oscar in his role as R.P. McMurphy. But the story requires a powerful Nemesis and it has one in the character of Nurse Ratched, played brilliantly by Louise Fletcher, who also won an Academy Award for her performance.

Ratched is the personification of authoritarianism, a soulless bureaucrat which is ironic in the extreme because she’s supposed to be a caregiver. Whereas McMurphy’s interactions with the other patients is about empowerment and freedom, Ratched is all about control which she orchestrates skillfully using a variety of psychological ploys while rarely raising her voice.

Here is a pivotal sequence from the movie. The morning after McMurphy orchestrates a night of debauchery and womanizing, Ratched arrives on the scene:

“You know, Billy, what worries me is how your mother’s going to take this.” With that comment, Ratched goes straight for Billy’s psychological jugular, the consequences of which lead to tragedy.

Like all great Nemesis characters, Ratched has a plausible world view, at least in her eyes. She believes she is right. The power she exudes is not put on, but is planted firmly deep inside her psyche. That power and her cold, calculating persona makes Nurse Ratched a worthy opponent to McMurphy — and in the end besting him in their struggle.

What are your thoughts about Nurse Ratched?

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