God is powerful: all-seeing and all-knowing. He knows the number of hairs on a person's head. He is the Creator, and all things of this earth are His; He is sovereign. He casts judgment on the people and punishes them how He sees fit. In the novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, written by Ken Kesey, the patients in a mental institution were firmly controlled by Nurse Ratched, the head of the ward. She instilled fear in the patients' hearts; therefore they obeyed her every wish. However, a new patient, McMurphy, entered the ward, and his objective was to remove the men from the control of the nurse, and he succeeded in gaining the allegiance of many of the patients. The nurse lost the power she has over the patients, whom she had taken pleasure in controlling. Although the Big Nurse accused McMurphy of playing with human lives as though he was God, she was actually the one impersonating God.
God has always been present everywhere, before He ever created the earth. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Nurse Ratched had been around the mental hospital for a very long time, even longer than the patient who had been there the longest. The nurse was also omnipresent. She would sit behind her glass window during the day and watch everything that went on in the day room. She took notes on the happenings of the room, and she always seemed to know everything about the patients. She knew all of their past mistakes and feelings of inadequacy. Chief Bromden actually believed that the nurse was always listening to everything the patients said. He said, "I don't hear anything except a faint reeling rhythm, what I figure is a tape recorder somewhere getting all of this" (58). .
God is to be feared. " 'Should you not fear me?' declares the Lord. 'Should you not tremble in my presence?'" are His words in Jeremiah 5:22. The nurse believed that she was someone to be reckoned with and feared.
