Big brother vs. The Big Nurse

It often strikes me how similar One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and 1984 by George Orwell are, not only in the dystopia they create, the use of “the hate” as a state of being, the creation of a bigger movement which seems to rule everything from a distance (In Orwell’s case “The Party” and in Kesey’s case “The Combine”), but also in the god-like figure that rules the previously mentioned dystopia. The Big Nurse has no feeling of pity or pain, or anything. In many ways she is exactly like Big Brother in Orwell’s novel: she’s always watching, she inspires fear without really punishing people outright, and she controls everything. There is however, one difference between her and Big Brother that makes her all the more intimidating: she’s real.

In Orwell’s book, Big Brother isn’t really a person. As an image, he can be everywhere and manage everything, without explicitly existing. This may seem daunting at first, having an imaginary entity watching over you, but overall, actually knowing that the physical being is lurking around ready to pounce makes the Big Nurse frightening. She has more direct presence in the patients’ life than Big Brother does in 1984’s citizens. Furthermore, Big Brother lacks the feminine intrigue that Nurse Ratched offers the role.   With the character being a woman, come many different types of intimidation than a man can attempt.

Oscar Wilde once said: “A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction.”  Women have always been a mystery to men, or at least that’s what many of the men I know have told me. In a woman, a smile can mean happiness, but it can also be resentful, angry, warning, sarcastic, etc. All in all, women pose enigmas men will never be able to figure out. Why is this worse than the image of Big Brother? Basically because a man being emasculated by a woman is, by far, more humiliating than a woman being intimidated by a man. The fear of humiliation in every patient’s life makes them feel insignificant, and, being unable to figure out what the nurse is thinking, they are often at loss as to how they are expected to react. Moreover, a man tends to be attracted by women, and not being able to get the Big Nurse’s attention in any way brings the interns’ confidence even lower.

“I couldn’t get it up over old frozen face in there even if she had the beauty of Marilyn Monroe.” Pg.64

Why are women so much more intriguing to men than men are to women? It’s probably because women are usually harder to figure out, more complicated, harsh, easy to anger and hard to calm down. A man is born with respect just because of the fact that he is a man, a woman is taught the hard way to demand respect, and nothing is more intimidating than a woman with power. Maybe this is why Kesey chose a woman for his god-like role, maybe he realized than a bunch of men being controlled by one powerful woman provided a certain tension and humiliation that wouldn’t be created if the leader was a man. Does this mean that his all-powerful being is better than Orwell’s? No. Does it mean that it is scarier? Yes.

Definitely yes.