olling the Ratched and the others. Nurse Ratched arrives in the morning after the party to find her patients hung over and her most controllable patient, Billy Bibbit, in bed with Candy Starr. Nurse Ratched tries to use her control over Billy against him by threatening to expose the events to his mother. This plan disastrously backfires as Billy commits suicide. Nurse Ratched sees an opportunity to win the control battle by blaming McMurphy for Billy’s death and she makes her move. “I hope you’re finally satisfied. Playing with human lives – gambling with human lives – as if you thought yourself to be a God!” (Kesey, 266) This is the last straw for a furious McMurphy. He believes that he controls Nurse Ratched and he must make a final stand for all the patients. He does not realize that he lost control over the ward when Billy died. He attacks her and succeeds in literally exposing what she really is to the other men, which permanently takes away what little control over the others that the Nurse still possessed. McMurphy believes that his control over Nurse Ratched is now absolute. This drastically distorted perception of his control falls apart, as his victory does not come without a tremendous price. He is taken away and lobotomized. McMurphy loses as much, if not more control than Nurse Ratched lost. When he returns to ward, Nurse Ratched puts him on display in a hopeless attempt to reinstall her control and fear into the hearts of the patients. “The men are not at all influenced by this, for they all are now influenced and controlled by only themselves.” (Semino and Swindlehurst, 1996) The Chief suffocates and kills McMurphy to put him out of his misery just before he takes control of his own destiny and escapes from the ward. After McMurphy’s lobotomy and death, the patients eventually begin to work together; some leave the ward while others stand up to the no longer so powerfu...
