One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Characters:

Ruckley

- A Chronic patient - Like Ellis, was once an Acute - Transformed into a Chronic due to a botched lobotomy

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

Public Relation

- A fat, bald bureaucrat who wears a girdle - Leads tours of the ward, pointing out that it is nice and pleasant

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

Martini

- A hospital patient - Martini lives in a world of delusional hallucinations - McMurphy includes him in the board and card games

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Sandy Gilfillian

- A prostitute who knows McMurphy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scanlon

- The only Acute besides McMurphy who was involuntarily committed to the hospital - Has fantasies of blowing things up

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.

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

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.

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.