In the early 1960s, Ken Kesey worked in the psychiatric ward of a veterans hospital as an aide. In the course of his work, Kesey realized that administrators were giving patients experimental LSD to cope with their mental illnesses. After seeing this, he began to wonder: who is mentally stable and what classifies a person as crazy (Kesey)? With this in mind Ken Kesey wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. This classic novel depicts the image of a psychiatric ward under the control of the manipulative nurse Ratched. The patients in the ward are lifeless; every waking moment is scheduled and controlled, until one day a new patient, Patrick McMurphy, arrives. Patrick McMurphy brings patients back to life and helps them overcome limitations. With McMurphy on the ward, normality becomes new. In answering the question of what normality is, Kesey uses character development, symbols, and motifs to give insight into the psychological well-being of others and how it changes with positive and negative changes. The characters in this novel describe different levels of mental stability. Over the course of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest each of the main characters undergoes a notable change in their mental state (Rutten). The schizophrenic narrator, Chief Bromden, is undoubtedly mad at the beginning. As a narrator, he provides insight into the inner workings of the hospital. Everything he sees is stated as fact, but cannot be taken literally since some of it is based on hallucinations and paranoia (Waxler). He states early on that "it's the truth even though it didn't happen" (Kesey, 8). He often looks back on his childhood. During these flashbacks he describes himself as small and his parents as large. In Chief's mind we read... in the center of the card... a way to escape; a sort of salvation. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest uses laughter as a measure of psychological well-being. Lack of laughter takes away from normality, while regular laughter makes everything seem normal. Before McMurphy arrives on the ward, every second of the patients' time is closely monitored and far from the normal standard. Without laughing, McMurphy begins to lose sight of his sanity. As everyone else begins to lighten up and laugh sincerely, the ward begins to open up as a place where patients can express themselves more freely. Invisibility is an important part of this novel because what is narrated by Chief Bromden generally happens when he feels invisible or hidden in the fog. When patients lash out at department administrators, they complain that they don't see or don't fully see all the details.