is not allowed to punish patients on whim. She must have strong reasons for punishment. Nurse Ratched is, however, similar to the Party in many ways. Nurse Ratched and her staff are constantly monitoring the mental hospital patients behavior. Through glass windows in the patients quarters, nurses are capable and seeing almost all that occurs on the ward. The nurses try to keep the patients under control through several different methods. One of these methods is the medication given several times a day. The second method is punishment. When patients misbehave, they are often sent to the Disturbed Ward where they are given electronic shock treatment. This treatment, if given too many times, can cause permanent brain damage. Chief Bromden, the narrator of One Flew over the Cuckoos Nest and a patient on the ward, is one such case of permanent damage, having gone through shock therapy over one hundred times. Chief Bromden, a six foot seven giant, sees himself as three feet tall and is thought to be deaf and mute, neither of which he is. These painful punishments help to keep patients in line. At the end of One Flew over the Cuckoos Nest, Randal Patrick McMurphy, the main character of this novel, attacks the Big Nurse, and consequently, McMurphy is given a lobotomy, which eliminates all freedom of thought and mentally destroys McMurphy. 1984 and One Flew over the Cuckoos Nest both use authority figures as the evil element in the novels. At the end of each of these novels, the authority figures, unfortunately, are victorious. The characters who rebel against the authority are even more important than the authority itself. In 1984, Winston Smith is the rebellious protagonist who fights against the oppressive party and inhumanity of life in Oceana. Winston is a man of average intellect. He is, as all other the citizens of Oceania are, under the oppression of the Party. Big Brother is always watching, monitering every thought...
