Randle Patrick McMurphy is a red-haired, wild American of Irish descent. He unself-consciously engages in brawling, gambling, chicanery, and exercising his carnal nature. His primitive inclinations mark him as an iconoclast in a world that increasingly values conformity. His anti-authoritarian attitude has already caused him a dishonorable discharge from the U.S. Marines, a punishment subsequent to his leading a successful escape from a Chinese prisoner-of-war camp during the Korean War.
McMurphy is interred at the hospital for "diagnosis and possible treatment," reads Nurse Ratched, who continues: "Thirty-five years old. Never married. Distinguished Service Cross in Korea, for leading an escape from a Communist prison camp. A dishonorable discharge, afterward, for insubordination. Followed by a history of street brawls and barroom fights and a series of arrests for Drunkenness, Assault and Battery, Disturbing the Peace, repeated gambling, and one arrest — for Rape."
It is perhaps part of McMurphy's innate nature that he does not adhere to social strictures. It is also reasonable to assert that his imprisonment during the Korean conflict deeply impacted his distrust of authority. The fact that he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for leading an escape serves as a foreshadowing of events later in the novel, but could also serve to create a more complete understanding of his character's motivations.
Although not foreign to hard physical labor, McMurphy chafes at his assignment to a prison work farm and looks forward to his confinement to a mental hospital as a pleasant way to spend the rest of his sentence for brawling. The violence of fighting is as natural an activity for men in a natural state as is the desire for sexual relations. McMurphy's run-ins with the law for statutory rape he declares preposterous, as his fifteen-year-old female "victim" lied about her age and initiated the sexual interlude.
