One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Characters Pt. 1&2

Chief Bromden

Narrator

Randle McMurphy

Protagonist

Nurse Ratched

Antagonist

Dale Harding

Educated and a closeted homosexual

Billy Bibbit

Voluntarily at the hospital. Shy and stutters a lot. Under his mother's control.

Doctor Spivey

A quiet doctor who is always pushed into doing Nurse Ratched's bidding. May be addicted to opiates.

Charles Cheswick

The first patient to support McMurphy's rebellion against Nurse Ratched's power. Cheswick, a man of much talk and little action, drowns in the pool—possibly a suicide—after McMurphy does not support Cheswick when Cheswick takes a stand against Nurse Ratched.

Warren, Washington, Williams, and Geever

Warren, Washington, and Williams are Nurse Ratched's daytime aides; Geever is the nighttime aide. They are filled with hatred and do her bidding perfectly.

Pete Bancini

A hospital patient who suffered brain damage when he was born. Pete Bancini continually declares that he is tired, and at one point he tells the other patients that he was born dead.

Martini

Martini lives in a world of delusional hallucinations, but McMurphy includes him in the board and card games with the other patients.

Old Blastic

A patient who is a vegetable. Bromden has a prophetic dream about a mechanical slaughterhouse in which Old Blastic is murdered. He wakes up to discover that Old Blastic died in the night.

Ellis

Ellis's excessive electroshock therapy transformed him into a Chronic. In the daytime, he is nailed to the wall. He frequently urinates on himself.

The lifeguard

The lifeguard was committed to the ward eight years ago. A patient and a former football player.

Ruckly

Ruckly, like Ellis, was once an Acute, but was transformed into a Chronic due to a botched lobotomy.

Scanlon

The only Acute besides McMurphy who was involuntarily committed to the hospital. Scanlon has fantasies of blowing things up.

Sefelt and Frederickson

Epileptic patients. Sefelt hates to take his medications because they make his teeth fall out, so he gives them to Frederickson, who likes to take Sefelt's dose in addition to his own.

Mr. Turkle

The black nighttime orderly for Nurse Ratched's ward. Mr. Turkle is kind to Bromden, untying the sheets that confine him to his bed at night.

Maxwell Taber

When Maxwell Taber questioned the nurse's authority, she punished him with electroshock therapy. The treatments made him completely docile. He was allowed to leave the hospital. He is considered a successful cure by the hospital staff.

Chief Tee Ah Millatoona

Chief's dad

Public Relation

Leads tours of the ward, pointing out that it is nice and pleasant.

Nurse Pilbow

A strict Catholic with a prominent birthmark on her face that she attempts to scrub away. Nurse Pilbow is afraid of the patients' sexuality.

Rawler

Rawler commits suicide by cutting off his testicles. This actual castration symbolizes the psychological emasculation to which the patients are routinely subjected.