Randle Patrick McMurphy is the main protagonist of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and the film of the same name. He is played by Jack Nicholson, who received an Oscar for his performance.
Biography
Beginnings
He begins as a brawler being found guilty of battery and gambling and (though never convicted of) statutory 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 instead of working in a prison farm.
Throughout the Story
When Randle is put in the institution, he realizes that his ward is run by the sinister Nurse Mildred Ratched, who bullies her patients by controlling toiletries, food and water, and has supreme control over medication.
Events Murphy makes counts him as a hero: for one thing, he is the ultimate savior of the victimized patients. He is able to fight for himself, but he decides to fight for them instead, like taking them to go on boat rides to give them freedom from Nurse Ratched's tyranny. Secondly, he encourages the fellow patients to rebel and escape, along with standing up for them when they get into trouble. Third, he sacrifices himself by fighting with Ratched and trying to kill her for terrifying Billy Bilbit into suicide. 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 before bringing back his old plan.