Randle McMurphy

Randle Patrick McMurphy or R.P. McMurphy is the main protagonist of Ken Kesey's novel, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest".

In the novel

McMurphy is an Irish-American brawler found guilty of battery and gambling (he had also been charged with, but never convicted of, statutory rape, something which he brags about). He is a Korean War veteran who was a POW during the war. He is sentenced to a fairly short prison term, and decides to have himself declared insane in order to be transferred to a mental institution, where he expects to serve the rest of his time in (comparative) comfort and luxury.

McMurphy's ward in the mental institution is run by the tyrannical Nurse Ratched, who has cowed the patients - who are mostly there by choice - into dejected submission. The two hate each other on sight, and McMurphy goes on a crusade to flout Ratched's regime of rules and punishment, as well as liberate the other patients from her grip.

Throughout his short stay at the hospital, McMurphy forms deep friendships with two of his fellow patients: Billy Bibbit, a stuttering manchild whom Ratched has dominated into a suicidal mess; and Chief Bromden, a Native American who appears to be catatonic. In the former, McMurphy sees a younger brother figure whom he wants to teach to have fun, while the latter is his only real confidante.

McMurphy becomes ensnared in a number of power-games with Nurse Ratched for the hearts and minds of the inmates. Toward the end of the novel, however, McMurphy is the clear winner, reminding the other patients how to enjoy life and stand up for themselves, and persuading them to act out against Ratched's bullying. Ratched tries everything to break his spirit, from solitary confinement to shock therapy, but he emerges from every punishment more defiant than before.

In the novel's climax, McMurphy sneaks two prostitutes into the ward to take Billy's virginity, while he and the others throw a party. Ratched catches them and threatens to tell Billy's mother - the only woman he fears more than her - which terrifies him so much that he commits suicide. Enraged, McMurphy nearly strangles Ratched, for which she has him lobotomized. Chief Bromden, unable to stand seeing his friend as a mindless zombie nor used as a symbol by Ratched to remind others of what happens when one "bucks the system", smothers him to death in an act of euthanasia. Bromden then uses a marble hydrotherapy control panel as a battering ram to break the window and flee from the asylum.

In other media

McMurphy has been played on stage by Kirk Douglas, Aleksandr Abdulov, Gary Sinise, Christian Slater, Shane Ritchie & Roman Wilhelmi (Polish adaptation). He was most famously portrayed by Jack Nicholson in the 1975 film adaptation.

References

*Ken Kesey, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", Viking Press, 1962