Curable?

1960s. Sex. Drugs. And more drugs. One Flew Over the Cuckoo´s Nest is in fact a prettycuckoo novel. In an age of counterculture, Ken Kesey, writes on the definition of what is truly insane. The fog represents the "combine", the system, that seems to be the oppressive power. But due to the fact that the Chief is in a mental hosiptal: the reader is left questioning whether the fog symbolizes the insanity of the Chief or insane techniques of the combine.

Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock (1969)

Granted, I am no doctor. I seem to think that the tactics used by Nurse Ratched are the truly insane characteristics of this mental institute. The fog that is endured by Chief Bromden is not shaving cream covering his eyes, its the electroshocks that have placed him in a constant mind of hallucinations: A Chronic. The way this mental institute is handled is insane: the point of sending a supposedly insane person to a mental institute is to help cure this physiological disorder. The exact opposite is occurring under Miss Ratched´s perfect planning. She creates the fog.  She creates the fear. She makes the patients develop strategies like Chief´s to survive. This totalitarian and oppressive system creates an absurd scenario: it creates insanity. Kesey ridicules the insanity of society, he indicates the true problems are created by ones "up-top."
The fog, Chief sees, is the perfect example of the paranoia that is lived in the confinement under Miss Ratched and The Blacks. Chief panics to the idea of not being in control, of knowing that not even by acting deaf will he evade the idea of being in another person´s hands. The symbolism of being incapable to see ¨six inches in front¨ is the terror and anxiety caused by being touched by the hands that will make you a vegetable. Slowly yet surely, discretely yet swift, Miss Ratched, creates a fog in each of her victims.  (victim is a far better word than patient maybe puppet could qualify.) Miss Ratched is fog. Fog is fear. Fear becomes insanity.