The Power of Power

Through out our lives we change, and we are never the same as we were before. Change is constant and it can never be stoped. Miss Ratched, McMurphy, Chief Bromden and Billy Bibbit are just examples of some people that we can see evolve through the story. But, what exactly makes them change? We believe we have absolute control of who we are, and what we choose to be, when in reality those with power model us, just like play-dough. Power is the reason behind our changes. 

When I talk about power it is not physical power, it's psychological. It is the kind of power that you cannot see, but the one that you can only feel. The unbalance of power McMurphy created when he initially arrived to the ward, is the cause for his own self to change. But, also he is the cause for nurse Ratched's change  in the end. Oppression from the big nurse shrinks him to a minuscule size. He retreats, and adjusts his behavior to that, that would please the big nurse. "The next day he surprised everybody on the wards by getting up early and polishing that latrine till it sparkled, and then went to work on the hall floors when the black boys asked him to." (Pg. 148) He does this things, because he knows she holds the power. She holds the power over him, and over his freedom. Her authority makes him change.

But, he, on the other hand, breaks her. He breaks her regime and power in the ward. After McMurphy, what she does isn't taken the same way as before, not with that same fear. He changed her, because he confronted her and rebelled her. Even after she deprived him from his own will, and basically killed him by authorizing the lobotomy operation, he had won. "She tried to get her ward back into shape, but it was difficult with McMurphy's presence still tromping up and down the hall...She couldn't rile with her old power anymore...She was losing her patients one after the other." (Pg. 277) 

Authority has the power to change people. Thats why it is used. "The Combine" as Chief Bromden calls society, uses power to mold us into shape. They take advantage of it to make us who they want us to be.  With power they fix their machines, or us, into perfection. Because that is what they want: Perfection in a machine world. However, there is always a gap. There is always a loophole, and here we find it. We found society's mistake. They never expected a McMurphy.