Fog

Fog: Something very simple yet very hard to explain.

Last year I had to analyze a movie using its visual effects. One of the elements I found as a continuous trend was fog. As I read One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s nest I found that the narrator, the chief, constantly talks about a fog machine. He mentions it every time he is scared or in a situation in which he feels threatened. The first time for example, is when the black boys and the Nurse are going to shave of his head.  As soon as they push the button on he feels the fog machine being turned on.

Many times, in movies, the director uses the fog as a barrier, to separate two things: what the fog covers, and what’s outside it. Many times this barrier represents the non-physical division between the two places, or, in the case of the chief, security. 

“They start the fog machine again and it’s snowing […] so thick I might even be able to hide in it if they didn’t have a hold on me”. (OFOCN Pg.7)

As the fog starts covering him, he feels safer; he “can’t see six inches before him” (pg.7). The fog clouds him and protects him form seeing what they are about to do to him which allows him o escape reality and just wake up after everything is over.

However, as I read on, the Chief said something that gave me a whole new perspective of what the fog might have meant:

“One of these days I’ll quit straining and let myself go completely, lose myself in the fog the way some of the other Chronics have…” (OFGOCN Pg. 37)

It’s a state of mind. Simple. The patients are obviously not sane, and they don’t have a clear state of mind. It represents the constant confusion they have, because of their insanity. It’s blurry, like the fog.