Chief describes the hospital before the staff meeting that Nurse Ratched calls. Prior to the meeting, he states: “I notice all the machinery in the wall is quiet, like it’s waiting for her to move,” as if Nurse Ratched controls all of the hospital’s apparatus, including all the staff members. This is contrasted with Chief’s observation that “there’s no more fog any place” when he enters the hallway, which gives the impression that McMurphy’s actions have stymied Nurse Ratched and the Combine.
In depicting the meeting, Kesey satirizes the psychology profession as a group of individuals eager to ascribe Latinate labels to McMurphy’s behavior.
Chief also uses temperature images to describe Nurse Ratched. Alternately frigid cold and scorching hot depending on her moods, both excessive temperatures indicate that she is somehow more machine than human. Prior to the meeting he recognizes, “It’s a little cold where the nurse just went past, and the white tubes in the ceiling circulate frozen like rods of glowing ice, like frosted refrigerator coils rigged up to glow white.” During the meeting, however, when she has the attention of the meeting members, she devises her plan to break McMurphy’s spirit. When she decides what course of action she is going to pursue, she takes her first sip of coffee. Chief notices that “the cup comes away from her mouth with that red-orange color on it…. That color on the rim of the cup must be from heat, touch of her lips set it smoldering.”
