The Chief's Fog

Throughout the first pages of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", by Ken Kesey, the narrator makes repetitive references to some kind of fog that creates a thick layer of skim milk material that obstacles the patient's view and  listening skills. This fog comes from a fog machine that is started, apparently, every time the Big Nurse needs to get hold of a patient out of control. Having in mind the narrator's schizophrenia, it is challenging to understand the fog's nature; is it palpable or is it symbolic?

For example, the first time the fog was mentioned was when the narrator suffered a panic attack before getting shaved. He was seized by a group of people and suddenly the fog machine was started and he could not see six inches in front of him nor listen to anything else but the Big Nurse taking control over the situation.

Another time the fog was mentioned was in page 37, where the Chief says "Before noontime they're at the fog machine again but they haven't got it turned up full, it's not so thick but what I can see if I strain real hard." Bearing in mind that the person talking is schizophrenic, I believe the fog machine may be some type of medicine forced on patients that will limit their vision and senses in order to make it easier to manipulate them. There is a scene in which the narrator says, "On rare occasions, some fool might ask what he's being required to swallow" (page 30). I connect this to the fog and conclude that the red pills enforced on patients, and for which the nurses refuse to give an explanation, are part of a series of tranquilizers given to patients. These tranquilizers, either because they are needed on behalf of a critical patient or because the nurses are careless upon their excessive use, are the cause of the fog the narrator claims to suffer from every once in a while.

The fog does not only represent the physical impediment the patient is suffering from but also the mental repercussions it causes. The fact that nurses implement these type of measures on their patients demonstrates how the mental hospital they live in is not the democratic place they claim they are but rather a systematic space in which patients are subdued to clinical authority and expected to act as society wants them to act. The nurses seem annoyed by the patients and react harshly to the slightest hint of discomfort on their behalf; they use the fog in order to make their jobs easier and simply have the patients subdued into a state of strained vision instead of having to fight against them or help them understand the reasons of their expected behavior.Yes, patients might be insane, but from what has been described there has not really been a need to make use of the fog and, nevertheless, there it is.