Springboard Activity One

Quote from book and Warm-Up

Students will read this quote on the smart board and answer the following questions: How do you feel about the nurse being a wolf? What do you think about people being wolfs in everyday life?
"This world ... belongs to the strong, my friend! The ritual of our existence is based on the strong getting stronger by devouring the weak. We must face up to this. No more than right that it should be this way. We must learn to accept it as a law of the natural world. The rabbits accept their role in the ritual and recognize the wolf as the strong. In defense, the rabbit becomes sly and frightened and elusive and he digs holes and hides when the wolf is about. And he endures, he goes on. He knows his place. He most certainly doesn't challenge the wolf to combat. Now, would that be wise? Would it?" He [Harding] lets go McMurphy's hand and leans back and crosses his legs, takes another long pull off the cigarette. He pulls the cigarette from his thin crack of a smile, and the laugh starts up again-eee-eee-eee, like a nail coming out of a plank. "Mr. McMurphy ... my friend ... I'm not a chicken, I'm a rabbit. The doctor is a rabbit. Cheswick there is a rabbit. Billy Bibbit is a rabbit. All of us in here are rabbits of varying ages and degrees, hippity-hopping through our Walt Disney world. Oh, don't misunderstand me, we're not in here because we are rabbits-we'd be rabbits wherever we were-we're all in here because we can't adjust to our rabbithood. We need a good strong wolf like the nurse to teach us our place." (Page, 185-187)
Explanation: Since McMurphy obviously hasn’t figured it out yet, Harding explains that he, like all of the patients on the ward, are just rabbits in a wolf’s mouth. Nurse Ratched is strong and they are weak, she is powerful and they are powerless.

Background Info
I teach Social studies