One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest characters

Appears from the start

The narrator, a towering half-Native American patient on the ward who has convinced everyone, including the staff, that he is deaf and mute. Withdrawn and watchful, he has been institutionalized for years and perceives the hospital and society as a vast controlling machine he calls the Combine, which he believes fogs and grinds down the men around him.

Appears from the start

A brash, swaggering con man and brawler who gets himself transferred to the psychiatric ward from a prison work farm, gambling that the hospital will be an easier place to serve out his sentence. Loud, gambling-mad, and irreverent, he arrives full of confidence and quickly sets about challenging the rigid order of the ward.

Appears from the start

The head nurse who runs the ward, known to the patients as Big Nurse. Cold, precise, and outwardly serene, she maintains absolute control through routine, surveillance, and subtle manipulation, keeping the men docile and dependent, and she immediately sees the newcomer as a threat to her authority.

Appears from the start

An articulate, educated patient who serves as president of the Patients' Council. Witty and self-aware but crippled by insecurity and shame, he is one of the more functional men on the ward and becomes an early sounding board for the newcomer.

Appears from the start

A gentle, boyish patient in his thirties who stutters badly and remains painfully timid, dominated by his fear of his mother, a friend of the head nurse. Anxious and eager to please, he is one of the men the newcomer takes a particular interest in drawing out.

Appears from the start

A patient who loudly wishes to stand up to the ward's authority but lacks the nerve to follow through on his own. He is quick to rally behind anyone else willing to take a stand.

Appears from the start

A good-natured patient who lives partly in a world of vivid hallucinations, seeing people and things that are not there, and who joins readily in the ward's games and antics.

Appears from the start

The ward's mild, ineffectual physician, nominally in charge but in practice deferring to the head nurse, who holds the real power over the men and the daily routine.