"What she dreams of...is a world of precision efficiency and tidiness...a place where the schedule is unbreakable..." (29) "She never gives orders out loud or leaves written instructions that might be found by a visiting wife or a schoolteacher. Doesn't need to anymore. They are in contact on a high-voltage wave length of hate, and the black boys are out there performing her bidding before she even thinks it." (31)
Within the first few chapters of the book, the Big Nurse's character is developed in such a way that her intentions in the ward are presumed malevolent. She, according to the narrator, is nothing less than a dictator and is clearly not hoping for any sort of miraculous cure for any of the patients if it means her orderly society must be tainted. It is evident that what she must be doing to the patients is not something a wife or anyone close to the patient would be happy with. Her rule is unhealthy and is induced by nothing less than hate and the desire to be in complete control. She trains the "black boys" around her to do exactly what she wants them to do, which is most likely against what is ethical. An article in Psych Central discusses a hospital that doesn’t sound too different from the one in this novel. Since 2005 over 70 employees at Texas’ 10 state mental hospitals have been fired for mistreating/abusing patients. Oftentimes, the workers that were fired from the hospitals used chokeholds, headlocks and threats of violence to restrain patients at these hospitals. Many other workers have been fired for overmedicating patients or sleeping on the job. It is astonishing that cases like these occur in America without being noticed for so long. One can imagine that the hospital in this novel, based on the so-far review of the Big Nurse, would be considered like the hospitals in this article. Any hospital run on hate must be quite abusive.
"She never gives orders out loud or leaves written instructions that might be found by a visiting wife or a schoolteacher. Doesn't need to anymore. They are in contact on a high-voltage wave length of hate, and the black boys are out there performing her bidding before she even thinks it." (31)
Within the first few chapters of the book, the Big Nurse's character is developed in such a way that her intentions in the ward are presumed malevolent. She, according to the narrator, is nothing less than a dictator and is clearly not hoping for any sort of miraculous cure for any of the patients if it means her orderly society must be tainted. It is evident that what she must be doing to the patients is not something a wife or anyone close to the patient would be happy with. Her rule is unhealthy and is induced by nothing less than hate and the desire to be in complete control. She trains the "black boys" around her to do exactly what she wants them to do, which is most likely against what is ethical. An article in Psych Central discusses a hospital that doesn’t sound too different from the one in this novel. Since 2005 over 70 employees at Texas’ 10 state mental hospitals have been fired for mistreating/abusing patients. Oftentimes, the workers that were fired from the hospitals used chokeholds, headlocks and threats of violence to restrain patients at these hospitals. Many other workers have been fired for overmedicating patients or sleeping on the job. It is astonishing that cases like these occur in America without being noticed for so long. One can imagine that the hospital in this novel, based on the so-far review of the Big Nurse, would be considered like the hospitals in this article. Any hospital run on hate must be quite abusive.