Critical acclaim and popular opinion have elevated Kesey’s first novel, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest published in 1962, to something of a modern classic, much read and written about as well as adapted for film. Cuckoo’s Nest offers an interesting alternative scenario to the usual depictions of the nurse as Angel of Mercy, the unskilled handmaiden or the ministering angel found in.
The tables are turned in the ward as everyone watches Ratched in the glassed-in Nurses’ Station after her outburst. She cannot escape the patients’ stares, just as they can never escape hers. Ratched strains to regain composure for the staff meeting she called. Bromden says the fog is completely gone now.