The first character that I feel confident placing would be McMurphy, who I personally think is an anti hero. He has traits that would make him qualify as a hero, but at the same time he shows traits that make him not so savory. The facts that he is lazy (he is in the mental hospital because he would rather be there than a work camp), aggressive (what originally got him in prison) and manipulative all point towards him being more of an anti-hero than anything else. He is rude at times and is obviously attempting to manipulate those within the ward. Nurse Ratched says, "He is what we call a ‘manipulator,’ Miss Flinn, a man who will use everyone and everything to his own ends." While not the most trustworthy, I do believe that she was telling the truth in this statement; this is proved even further once he takes the bet at the end in order to try to get under the Nurse's skin and try to turn the already established order a little onto its head.
Another easy one to place would be the Head Nurse. While probably not as mean as McMurphy would lead us to believe, the truth of the matter is that she does not really seem to care about the patients. Also, like McMurphy, she is manipulative and used to being in control. She has everything running under a tight ship, under her control, and the doctor can't do a thing about it thanks to his cowardliness. She definitely is looked upon as the villain to most people in the ward. McMurphy's conversation with Harding at the end proves that everyone in the ward thinks of her as meanest, most manipulative woman on the face of the planet. After McMurphy attempts to prove this to Harding, he eventually gives in, admitting that, "No one’s ever dared come out and say it before, but there’s not a man among us that doesn’t think it, that doesn’t feel just as [McMurphy does] about [Nurse Ratched] and the whole business, " She's got them under such a tight rein that they can't even admit to themselves that they dislike her through some sort of cognitive dissonance. She holds the rest of the ward in fear, so much fear that they are helpless to do anything about it.
The hardest one to place would be hero...there doesn't appear to be any heroes in this story, at least not of the traditional sort. Even with tragic hero, it would be hard to shoehorn a character into the role. I would say Harding might fit a tragic hero, but I can't say that I know enough about him to be able to aptly place him. His faults are not ones that would make a villain or even an anti hero. He could be a hero, but his cowardly attitude, even if it is self-aware, would make it hard for him to a traditional hero. Even more so, I have little idea of how much he will even affect the story. Another character in a similar situation is the Chief, who also cannot fit as a villain or anti-hero, but isn't a traditional hero. The fact that he clearly cannot be trusted also leads you to wonder how much of what he tells you is true, and how much of it is his insane ramblings. Either way, I don't know how much bearing he will have to do with the story, regardless of his place as the narrator.
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