Congratulations to Jen for being the first to identify Colleen's alter ego as Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
This is from the Wikipedia entry on Nurse Ratched:
A cold, sadistic tyrant, Nurse Ratched has become the stereotype of the nurse as a "battleaxe." She has also become a popular metaphor for the corrupting influence of power and authority in bureaucracies such as the mental institution in which the novel is set.
Nurse Mildred Ratched is the head administrative nurse at the Salem, Oregon State (Mental) Hospital, where she exercises near-absolute power over the patients' access to medications, privileges, and basic necessities such as food and toiletries. She capriciously revokes these privileges whenever a patient displeases her. Her superiors turn blind eyes because she maintains order, keeping the patients from acting out, either through antipsychotic and anticonvulsant drugs or her own brand of "therapy", which consists mostly of humiliating patients into doing her bidding.
Here's a clip of Nurse Ratched in action. There is some strong vocabulary in this clip, so those with delicate sensibilities shouldn't click through.
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2 comments:
Ouch! Scathing description! I do identify with the part about maintaing order....but I won't need anticonvulsants, though, a few bottles of wine should do the trick!
I thought it was my 2nd grade teacher, Miss Marr.
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