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<title> One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey </title>
McMurphy arrives to the otherwise very silent and calm mental institution, run by the Big Nurse. He's wild, provoking, manages to get the other patients to follow his footsteps and to do foolish things. McMurphy arrives as a big change in the wind. He is like a tornado paving the way through a gentle breeze. He turns the whole mental institution upside down. 
	As a reader you get to know Randle Patrick McMurphy through the eyes of one of the inmates, Chief Bromden, who describes and tells you everything McMurphy does and says. You never get in touch with McMurphy's own feelings or thoughts, but in the way Bromden tells you how McMurphy reacts and handles certain situations, you still get to know him pretty well.
	In the beginning of the book, you notice immediately that McMurphy is going to be a very special character comparatively to the other quiet, grey "shadow-like" inmates, when Bromden describes his first appearance at the institution; "He stands there waiting, and when nobody makes a move to say anything to him he commences to laugh. Nobody can tell exactly why he laughs; there's nothing funny going on. But it's not the way that Public Relation laughs, it's free and loud. (...) Not like that fat Public Relation laugh. This sounds real. I realize all of a sudden it's the first laugh I've heard in years." 
	Laugh - that is the keyword when it comes to McMurphy. He brings laughter to the institution and his goal is to make the other patients to start laughing as well; to lighten up, have fun, and to get them to get out of their grey world they are living in. "He's being the clown, working at getting some of the guys to laugh. It bothers him that the best they can do is grin weakly and snigger sometimes."
	When McMurphy arrives to the ward he immediately becomes the leader of the patients - they look up to him. He is the only one who dares to confront the Big Nurse who runs the institution. She has very strict rules and have all her patients in tight reins - they are almost brainwashed by her. McMurphy doesn't seem to care too much about that though. He teases her (mostly in a sexual way), ignores her rules (- tries to make the ward more democratic by convincing the patients to vote about different things), acts disturbing and provoking, and has a bad influence on the other patients (according to the Nurse). A mental struggle develops between him and the Big Nurse, where no one wants to give in. "He'd won his bet; he'd got the nurse's goat the way he said he would, and had collected on it, but that didn't stop him from going right ahead and acting like he always had, hollering up and down the hall, laughing at the black boys, frustrating the whole staff, even going so far as to step up to the Big Nurse in the hall one time and ask her, if she didn't mind tellin', just what was the actual inch-by-inch measurement on them great big ol' breasts that she did her best to conceal but never could." 
	He is very smart as well. He doesn't let the Big Nurse or the other staff know if he is upset of something or somebody. He makes them all think that nothing gets to him, making them all even more frustrated. "He's making sure none of the staff sees him bothered by anything; he knows that there's no better way in the world to aggravate somebody who's trying to make it hard for you than by acting like you're not bothered. (...) A couple of times some stupid rule gets him mad, but he just makes himself act more polite and mannerly than ever till he begins to see how funny the whole thing is - the rules, the disapproving looks they use to enforce the rules, the ways of talking to you like you're nothing but a three-year-old - and when he sees how funny it is he goes to laughing, and this aggravates them no end. He's safe as long as he can laugh, he thinks, and it works pretty fair."
	McMurphy is very caring when it comes to his fellow-inmates. He tries to get them to loosen up and to give them a chance to act like "normal" people. He introduces them to gambling, girls, drinking, takes them out on a fishing-trip etc. He is doing it all for them - his friends, not realizing that it might not be good for them. He is trying to make them something they're not. "That's what McMurphy can't understand, us wanting to be safe. He keeps trying to drag us out of the fog, out in the open where we'd be easy to get at." 
	When it comes to McMurpy's mental condition, he seems to be the most "normal" person at the institution. In the beginning of the book you don't notice any particular mental disorders at all, except that he is perhaps a little cheeky and wild. But gradually, he shows more of his other sides; he becomes both violent and menacing at some points. 
R.P. McMurphy is a person you get to like immediately; his charm, his cheerful personality and his humour. Even if he does something wrong, you are always on his side. He is a man who wants to live a wild and eventful life. He is very impulsive and does things without thinking about the consequences. He just don't realize that his way of living is not appropriate at a mental institution and his fellow-inmates aren't supposed to follow his footsteps. Still, even if he made them doing stupid things, he at least brought happiness into their lives.
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