A black-coated supervisory nurse, Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher) (known as Big Nurse in the novel) arrives at the locked, security ward of a state mental hospital [on location in Salem, Oregon at the Oregon State Hospital/Asylum], where patient inmates, nurses, and orderlies attend o early morning medications.He critiques the laughable script: "This is fascinating...What it needs is, uh, maybe a little more dialogue...it certainly could use a pair of shears and a blue pencil." But Norma objects to cutting it severely - "I will not have it butchered." He suggests an editing job to organize and improve it, and to provide a more contemporary slant, but Norma insists she must have someone she can trust, not just anybody.What do you think she is, some kind of a champ or somethin""?" The contest of wills with the Nurse is played out as a struggle to win the other inmates over to his way of thinking and behaving by establishing a political majority, to lead various group insurrections, and to emphasize how hey have been denied their freedom of will:I bet in one week, I can put a bug so far up her ass, she don""t know whether to s--t or wind her wristwatch.Spartacus"" questing dream for the "death of slavery" would be doomed for two millennia:In the last century before the birth of the new faith called Christianity, which was destined to overthrow the pagan tyranny of Rome and bring about a new society, the Roman Republic stood at he very center of the civilized world.