PART THREE: KILLER CHARACTERS BLOGFEST

This week I'm taking part in the

KILLER CHARACTERS BLOGFEST

It's the brainchild of delightful bloggers Deana Barnhart and E. R. King. You can pop on over to their blogs to get the list of other participants and read their posts.

Now THIS is the one I've been waiting for!

Our assignment today is to present our

 FAVORITE ANTAGONIST

from literature.

So let me introduce her ...
She's cold, calculating and controlling.

She's manipulative and mean,
but she disguises it beneath a smooth, poreless mask
of quiet, unruffled calm.

So here she is, ladies and gentlemen ...
Everybody's favorite sociopath ...

The woman voted

"Most Likely to Volunteer to be Dr. Mengele's Assistant " 

 

Nurse Rached

from

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

by

Ken Kesey (1962)

Nurse Rached is the head nurse at a mental institution in Salem, Oregon, where she maintains absolute control over the residents. She rewards total obedience and cruelly punishes any behavior that could threaten the perfect predicability of her realm. Nurse Rached is a quiet tyrant, a sick sociopath hidden behind glassy skin and a crisply-sprayed-to-perfection pageboy hairdo.

Enter Randle McMurphy, a relatively sane inmate with a rebellious streak. McMurphy tries to bring fun and humanity to the ward, and in doing so, threatens Nurse Rached's dictatorship. She retaliates with small punishments at first, but when McMurphy persists, Nurse Rached ups the ante. She gives McMurphy shock therapy to weaken him. But McMurphy is a fighter and his efforts have awakened rebellion in the other, previously docile inmates. Sensing that her enemy's strength is growing despite her efforts to diminish him, Nurse Rached uses the ultimate weapon in her arsenal - she has McMurphy lobotomized.

In the 1975 film, McMurphy was played by Jack Nicholsen. Nurse Rached was played by Louise Fletcher, who won the Oscar for Best Actress for her incredible portrayal of one of the biggest b#tches in literary history. Nurse Rached was voted the fifth worst villian in movie history by the American Film Institute.