The Narrator’s Influence on Nurse Ratched
Transmedia Narratology in Ken Kesey’s and Miloš Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Introduction of the essay/seminar paper for the University of Bern, English department. This paper was written as assignment to pass the MA seminar Books into Film: American Cinematic Adaptations of Literary Texts.
Introduction
In Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the Head Nurse, Mildred Ratched, is an intriguing character (Kesey 1962). In the eyes of the narrator, Chief Bromden, she is an agent of what he calls the Combine, a mysterious instance that wants people to conform to its norms. Through Miloš Foreman’s (1975) film adaptation of the novel, the Big Nurse gained so much popularity that the actress playing her, Louise Fletcher, won an Academy Award for Best Actress (oscars.org). However, the novel and the film differ in their narrative situation, which asks how the changes in the narration affect characters such as Ratched, who are hard to evaluate to begin with.
Generally, differences between media fall under intermediality, which describes anything that happens “between media” (Rajewsky 46). Agreeing with Jonathan Mack, Rajewsky’s definition is too broad to use, as it just implies that two or more forms of media are involved (24). Instead, Markus Kuhn and Jan-Noël Thon suggest focusing on aspects of intermediality, such as transmedial narratology, which looks at narrative strategies and investigates narrative realizations across media (254). Here, Mary-Laure Ryan further differentiates between transmedia narratology and transmedia storytelling (2). According to Ryan, the former is concerned with the narrative potential of different media and their interrelation (2). In contrast, the latter is concerned with stories and worldbuilding that transcend one medium, such as Harry Potter (2). She further argues that adaptations, albeit not transmedia storytelling per se, are still included in the resulting transmedia storyworlds (4). 1 Partially agreeing with this, I argue that both transmedia narratology and transmedia storytelling can overlap regarding adaptations. The retellings of the same story in different media could involve different perspectives that adds or removes layers of meanings or presents characters differently. This holds true considering the different narrative possibilities and limitations in different media regarding the narrator and their influence on the audience’s perception of characters.
The differences between the narrative situations in Kesey’s and Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest have been the subject of various scholars, most notably Donald Palumbo (1983), John Zubizarreta (1994), and Thomas Slater (1988). They agree that by removing Bromden as the narrator and sidelining him for most of the movie, the story shifts its focus to the conflict between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched (Zubizarreta 63; Slater 47; Plumbo 26). However, they see different impacts on the perception of the characters. Zubizarreta argues that the movie is simplified, stripped away from layers of meaning by removing the narrator (65). Consequently, he claims that McMurphy has been reduced to a hero role, who fights his counterpart, Nurse Ratched (63). Certainly right in some points, his argument about the characters being simplified to this extent seems too harsh and does not consider the narratological situation of the movie. Similarly, Palumbo sees the movie as being simplified as well, stripped away from psychological depth and crucial symbolism (26). However, he argues that the main characters are “reduced to human scale” (26). Looking at his arguments, Palumbo focuses more on what has been stripped away from the characters rather than exploring their portrayal. In contrast, Slater does not see a simplification of McMurphy and Nurse Ratched (48;52). He considers that Bromden tells the story from his perspective in the novel, idealizing characters such as McMurphy in the process (45). Slater further argues that the distinction between McMurphy and Ratched as hero and villain becomes blurred in the movie as both appear more human (51). Additionally, he adds that the film was also criticized for portraying women in a misogynist light, presenting them as “sexual treats and builders of male egos or castraters” (Slater 54).2
Even though this critique holds up, I argue that the narratological situation influences how the audience perceives characters such as Nurse Ratched. Considering transmedia narratology, this essay aims to explore the different modes of narration of the novel and the movie, as well as how they influence the perception of Nurse Ratched. I claim that by shifting from a homodiegetic, unreliable narrator to a more objective narrative, the character of Nurse Ratched appears more ambivalent in the movie. Additionally, it is argued that what Bromden identifies as the Combine can be understood as social expectations and norms, which become a gendered matter in the case of Ratched. Thus, the movie portrays her less as an evil agent of the Combine who manipulates her patients into conformity and more as an ambivalent human being who finds herself in a more personal struggle for control. Unlike the novel, Forman’s Ratched is also subjected to gendered social expectations and norms, which she does not conform to through her position at the ward. Consequently, her need for control becomes a struggle to remain in a position of authority in a male-dominated environment that could otherwise identify her as a patient as well.
The Schizophrenic Narrator: Big Nurse as the Agent of the Combine
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Notes
1 Storyworlds can be described as the fictional world in which different stories happen. Thus, each narrative contributes to the building of such a storyworld, as each expands what the reader knows about this specific world. As an example, Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter can be named. (See Ryan 2016).
2 For criticism of the portrayal of women in both Kesey’s novel and Forman’s movie see Forrey (1975), and Géfin (1992).
Works Cited
Primary Sources
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Dir. Miloš Forman. United Artists, 1972.
Kesey, Ken. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. 1962. New York: Penguin, 2002.
Secondary Sources
Géfin, Laszlo K. “The Breasts of Big Nurse: Satire versus Narrative in Kesey’s ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’. Modern Language Studies 22.1 (1992): 96–101.
Forrey, Robert. “Ken Kesey’s Psychopathic Savior: A Rejoinder.” Modern Fiction Studies 22.2 (1957): 222–230.
Kuhn, Markus and Thon, Jan-Noël. “Transmedial Narratology: Current Approaches.” Narrative25.3 (2017): 253–255.
Mack, Jonathan. “Finding Boarderland: Intermediality in the Films of Marc Foster.” Cinema Journal 56.3 (2017): 24–46.
oscars.org.[website]: n.d., www.oscars.org.
Palumbo, Donald. “Kesey’s and Forman’s ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’: The Metamorphosis of Metamorphoses as Novel becomes Film.” CEA Critic 45.2 (1983): 25–32.
Rajewsky, Irina. “Intermediality, Intertextuality, and Remediation: A Literary Perspective on Intermediality.” Intermedialities 6 (2005): 43–64.
Ryan, Marie-Laure. “Transmedia Narratology and Transmedia Storytelling.” Artnodes 18 (2016): 1–10.
Slater, Thomas J. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. A Tale of two Decades.“ Film and Literature: a Comparative Approach to Adaptation. Ed. Wendell Aycock and Michael Schoenecke. Lubbock, Texas: Texas Tech University Press, 1988. 45–58.
Zubizarreta, John. “The Disparity of Point of View in ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest‘.“ Literature/Film Quarterly 22.1 (1994): 62–69.
