The Fog

"....just like the fiends in that room was conducted in a beam along the fog and pulled me back along it like a robot."(125)  In this passage Chief is expressing his new opinion on the fog.  He used to think the fog was a scary place and wanted to be rescued from it.  McMurphy was the guy that was to rescue them from the fog.  Whenever Chief used to wander in the fog he always wound up at the same place almost as if a robot had pulled him in.  The door to Shock Therapy.  Chief does not want to get his hopes up about McMurphy rescuing the patients from the fog.  Big Nurse appears to powerful and in Chiefs mind McMurphy has just won a little battle in a big war.  Chief now thinks it will be better if he stays put in the fog and does not try and escape.  "You had a choice: you could either strain and look at things that appeared in front of you in the fog, painful as it might be, or you could just relax and lose yourself."(125) Chief seems to have chosen the second choice and given up on escaping the ward's power over the patients.