CHARACTERS
R. P. McMurphy
A con man who becomes a modern-day rebel and hero cast in the mode of the cowboy hero of the American Western. Charming and manipulating, he is a forceful character living a generation too late. He challenges authority. Using a strong sense of humor and comic exaggeration, he instigates the changes at the sanitarium and teaches the inmates to be sane. In the end, Nurse Ratched teaches him the ultimate lesson on authority.
Billy Bibbit
A thirty-one year old man, still psychologically an adolescent, is still under the control of his mother. McMurphy finds a way to bring out his manhood. Later is driven to suicide by Nurse Ratched.
Chief Bromden
Schizophrenic, and as narrator, holds a key position. He is a tall and strong Native American who feigns muteness and deafness to protect himself from pain. McMurphy rescues him from his silence. He, in turn, rescues McMurphy from life as a vegetable.
Nurse Ratched
Big Nurse, described as 'enormous, capable of swelling up bigger and bigger to monstrous proportions. She is the ward superintendent, the ultimate authority demanding obedience and perfect order from everyone
Dale Harding
The best educated of the men on the ward, Dale Harding is president of the Patients' Council when McMurphy is admitted to the hospital. He serves a useful purpose, both for McMurphy and for us: while the Chief with his hallucinations may give us an unusual insight into the hospital, Harding gives us the sorts of rational explanations we're used to hearing. It's Harding who tells McMurphy how Nurse Ratched is able to maintain her power, how electroshock therapy works, what a lobotomy does to people. It's Harding who gives the new patients and the reader the understanding of the matriarchy Nurse Ratched directs. His change and cure is complete, thanks to McMurphy.
Ps. Nich erschrecken falls sie mit ihrem Mauszeiger zufällig auf das Bild kommen!!!