Randle McMurphy

Randle Patrick McMurphy is the main protagonist of Ken Kesey's novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and the film adaption of said name. He is a con man, a gambler, and a backroom boxer. He is played by Jack Nicholson who had won the Academy Award for Best Actor.

He begins as a brawler being found guilty of battery and gambling and (though never convicted of) statuatory rape of a 15-year-old girl. He faked insanity to serve out his prison sentence, and decided to spend the rest of it in a hospital in comparative comfort and luxury.

However, his ward is run by the tyrannical Nurse Mildred Ratched.

Events Murphy makes counts him as a hero: for one thing, he is the ultimate savior of the victimized patients. Secondly, he helps the fellow patients encourage and escape. Third, he sacrifices himself by fighting with Ratched and trying to kill her. For this, he gets a lobotomy. After this, one of his friends, Chief Bromden, being unable to see either of his friends as a mindless zombie or used as a symbol by Ratched to remind others of the result of "bucking the system" smothers McMurphy with a pillow in an act of euthanasia.