Chief Bromden, a gigantic Euro-Indigenous American patient at a psychiatric hospital, who presents himself as deaf, mute, and docile. Bromden's tale focuses mainly on the antics of tale focuses mainly on the antics of the rebellious Randle Patrick McMurphy, a petty criminal who, fakes insanity to serve his sentence in a mental ward rather than prison. He soon finds himself as a leader to the other patients—and an enemy to the cruel, domineering nurse who runs the ward.