One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Characters:

Chief Bromden

- The narrator

- Son of the chief of the Columbia Indians and a white

woman

- Suffers from paranoia and hallucinations,

- Has received multiple electroshock treatments, and

has been in the hospital for ten years

-Sees modern society as a huge, oppressive conglomeration that he calls the Combine and the hospital as a place meant to fix people who do not conform

Randle McMurphy

-The protagonist.

-Big, redheaded gambler, a con man, and a backroom boxer.

- His body is heavily scarred and tattooed, and he has a fresh scar across the bridge of his nose.

- He was sentenced to six months at a prison work farm, and when he was diagnosed as a psychopath—for "too much fighting and ****ing"—he did not protest because he thought the hospital would be more comfortable than the work farm.

- Serves as the unlikely Christ figure in the novel—the dominant force challenging the establishment and the ultimate savior of the victimized patients.

Nurse Ratched

-The head of the hospital ward

- The antagonist

- Middle-aged former army nurse.

- Has an iron hand and masks her humanity and femininity behind a stiff, patronizing facade.

- She selects her staff for their submissiveness

- She weakens her patients through a psychologically manipulative program designed to destroy their self-esteem.

- Emasculating, mechanical ways slowly drain all traces of humanity from her patients.

Dale Harding

-An acerbic, college-educated patient and president of the Patients' Council

- Helps McMurphy understand the realities of the hospital

- Married, but is a homosexual

- He has difficulty dealing with the overwhelming social prejudice against homosexuals, so he hides in the hospital voluntarily.

- First to check out of the ward

Billy Bibbit

-A shy patient

- Stutters

- Thirty-one years old

- Dominated by his mother (one of Nurse Ratched's close friends)

-Billy is voluntarily in the hospital

- Afraid of the outside world.

Doctor Spivey

- A mild-mannered doctor who may be addicted to opiates

- Nurse Ratched chose Doctor Spivey as the doctor for her ward because he is as easily cowed and dominated

- With McMurphy's arrival, he begins to assert himself

- He often supports McMurphy's unusual plans for the ward, such as holding a carnival

Charles Cheswick

- The first patient to support McMurphy's rebellion

- A man of much talk and little action

- Drowns in the pool (suicide) after McMurphy does not support when he takes a stand against Nurse Ratched

- His death is significant in that it awakens McMurphy to the extent of his influence and the mistake of his decision to conform

Black Boys

(Warren, Washington, Williams, and Geever)

- Hospital aides

- Warren, Washington, and Williams are Nurse Ratched's daytime aides

- Geever is the nighttime aide

- Nurse Ratched hired them because they are filled with hatred and will submit to her wishes completely

Candy Starr

- A beautiful, carefree prostitute from Portland

- Candy Starr accompanies McMurphy and the other patients on the fishing trip

- Comes to the ward for a late-night party that McMurphy arranges

George Sorenson

- A hospital patient, a big Swede, and a former seaman - McMurphy recruits George Sorenson to be captain for the fishing excursion

- Phobia toward dirtiness

- McMurphy's defense of George leads McMurphy to his first electroshock treatment

Pete Bancini

- A hospital patient who suffered brain damage when he was born

- Continually declares that he is tired

- At one point he tells the other patients that he was born dead.

Martini

- A hospital patient

- Martini lives in a world of delusional hallucinations

- McMurphy includes him in the board and card games

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

- A patient who was once an Acute

- 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

- A patient and a former football player

- Committed to the ward eight years ago

- Experiences hallucinations

- Reveals a key fact to McMurphy—that committed patients can leave only when Nurse Ratched permits

- This changes McMurphy's initial rebelliousness into temporary conformity

Sandy Gilfillian

- A prostitute who knows McMurphy

Ruckley

- A Chronic patient

- Like Ellis, was once an Acute

- Transformed into a Chronic due to a botched lobotomy

Scanlon

- The only Acute besides McMurphy who was involuntarily committed to the hospital

- 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.

- Do not receive much care or attention by the staff, who are much more concerned with making the disorderly patients orderly

Mr. Turkle

- The black nighttime orderly for Nurse Ratched's ward

- Kind to Bromden, untying the sheets that confine him to his bed at night

- Goes along with the nighttime ward party

Maxwell Taber

- A former patient who stayed in Nurse Ratched's ward before McMurphy arrived

- When Maxwell Taber questioned the nurse's authority, she punished him with electroshock therapy

- After 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 Bromden's father,

- Also known as The Pine That Stands Tallest on the Mountain

- Chief of the Columbia Indians

- He married a Caucasian woman and took her last name

- She made him feel small and drove him to alcoholism

- The chief's marriage and submission to a white woman makes an important statement about the oppression of the natural order by modern society and also reflects white society's encroachment on Native Americans

Public Relation

- A fat, bald bureaucrat who wears a girdle

- 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

- A patient on the Disturbed ward

- Rawler commits suicide by cutting off his testicles

- This actual castration symbolizes the psychological emasculation to which the patients are routinely subjected