I recently watched the Netflix series, ‘Ratched’, which explored a possible backstory for the character Nurse Ratched from ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’, both the play and the film. The intent of the series was to explore the question are monsters born or made. What I found fascinating, however, was how a story that lacked a central likeable character could still be fascinating to follow? The only real good person in it was the war veteran, Huck, but he had a more supporting role, which kind of suggested that being good was most definitely not a precedent for success.

The traditional story has the protagonist, usually identified as good, and the antagonist, usually identified as bad. The best stories tend to blur the lines between them. Personally, as both a reader and a writer, I have moved towards seeing people in the light of the agenda that they are pursuing and reserving moral judgement for the conclusion. This appears to be the approach of the writers on Ratched.

One of the things that I liked about this show was that every character, with the possible exception of Huck, was shown to be both good and bad to varying extents. Ratched was attempting to save her brother, Tolleson, from execution. She accepted that he should be punished for his crime, she did not accept that death was a fitting punishment; it was just an ends to a means for those involved, the State Governor for one. Tolleson committed his crime because society would not punish those who had committed crimes against him and his sister, as a result he had no remorse for what he had done, which made him appear as a monster to others.

Against the backdrop of a society that was cruel, bleak, cynical, and uncaring unless there was something to gotten from a situation, Ratched became worryingly human. Although I found it difficult to like her on more than one occasion, I wanted her to succeed. Her warped logic could make sense of some equally twisted situations. Other people were either to be used, avoided, or gotten rid of, each summation dependent on those twisted situations. It was not surprising that a character originally perceived as an enemy would later become an ally; Ratched is an expert manipulator who rarely allows personal proclivities to get in the way of making use of someone else. This is useful because she can also function in reverse, getting rid of people who were previously useful but now proving to be a problem. If people like that succeed in our society, then what does that say about us as individuals?

A character like Ratched is not going to be the protagonist in my next book, perhaps even not one of the supporting characters as I am aiming for whimsical surrealism and not horror, but she is a fascinating example of an approach to character creation that I think I would like to explore in further detail in a future project.