I've Met Nurse Ratched

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest addresses the issue of how authorities control individuals through subtle and coercive methods.

Nurse Ratched is the memorable foil who controls the denizens of the mental ward through a twisted synthesis of rewards and shame.

She is despicable because her actions unfairly exploit the less gifted.

The primary thrust of the novel is as a critique of the conformity inherent in post-war American consumer society.

There is an echo of the analysis, and with the mental ward an analogy can be drawn to instruments of oppression, comparable to the prison analysis developed by French intellectual Michel Foucault at roughly the same time.