One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest 3

1.  Why didn't patients leave the ward when they were unhappy with the Nurse?
I think that a lot of the patients stayed because it was a place where they could be around other people who understood them and liked them. Out in the real world, things would be different. I also think they stayed because staying was what expected for them to get better, even though Nurse Ratched wasn't helping them very much.

2. What was the significance of the "fog" that the Chief described?
The fog represented the Chief's own little world, where he was detached from reality. It was a main aspect of his hallucinations that really showed the readers that he had a disorder. However, as the book goes on, the fog becomes milder. This is because McMurphy is helping Chief become better by helping bring down the Nurse and the "Combine".

3. Does McMurphy actually have mental problems worth hospitalization?
I do not think McMurphy actually had anything wrong with him, and if he did, it must have been small. I think he just had a unique, flamboyant personality that was not typical in these days. The hospitalization of McMurphy really says a lot about society during this time period; if anything was not conformed, they tried to make it conform. They just wanted McMurphy to be "normal", and the same thing goes for lots of the other patients.

4. To what extent did Chief Bromden's mental problems affect the audience's view of the story?
The Chief's hallucinations and delusions could have really affected the story. There were many things, such as fog and people being nailed to the walls, that he was obviously saying through his disorder. But there could have been many other things that Chief had a very skewed view and opinion on that we will never know what really happened. While I was reading the book, a lot of times I thought that the Chief might be exaggerating and things weren't really as bad as he saw them, but when people started killing themselves and getting into lots of situations because of the Nurse, I thought that maybe the Chief's view wasn't very farfetched.