ous to the domineering control she exerts over the others. After the World Series incident, she realizes that her control over McMurphy may not currently exist, but she knows that she holds all the cards. She remains confident that she will break his spirit eventually. She continues to fight McMurphy by posting newspaper clippings of boating accidents when he proposes the fishing trip. She also uses her best methods to get control over McMurphy. She relocates him to The Disturbed ward after he gets into a fight with the black boys. She subjects him to EST and tries to turn the ward against McMurphy after the fishing trip. She posts the patients’ financial statements so that they can see how much money McMurphy has won from them. McMurphy does not submit to the EST, and he is able to explain and justify his winnings to the other patients. Even after her attempts to break McMurphy’s spirit fail, she remains confident that she will win control over him and the other patients. She thinks she has control because she has always had it and had never been without it. She makes the same mistake that McMurphy makes during the climax. She does not realize that she has already lost her control over the ward. This does not become clear to her until after she sees Billy’s dead body and after the patients actually see, what she thinks is her only true weakness, her actual female figure. Nurse Ratched thought that by giving McMurphy a lobotomy and by taking away a man who was like a god to the Acutes she would regain all of her control and put fear back into the men. What she did not realize was all of McMurphy's strength; courage and spirit would stay with the men. McMurphy, even after he was gone, still gave the men the strength to stand up for themselves and not let the Big Nurse regain her control of the ward. She also never realized that she could not maintain her control of the ward through manipulation emasculation and authorit...
