Leo Caraway is the first-person narrator and protagonist of Born to Rock. Leo begins the novel as “president of my high school’s Young Republicans, accepted to Harvard, and on a fast track to a six-figure income” (3-4). Leo also has a wild side he nicknames McMurphy, whom Leo has blamed for misbehavior and acting out ever since he found out his biological father is a stranger named Marion X. McMurphy. Leo feels McMurphy is a strange, unknown part of himself that he must suppress.

However, two things knock Leo’s life off track: He’s wrongfully accused of cheating, which results in the revocation of his Harvard scholarship, and he discovers that Marion X. McMurphy is the birth name of King Maggot—the frontman of Purge, the most notorious punk band of all time. Leo eventually puts together that he has a rich biological father that can pay for his Harvard tuition and formulates a plan to get close to King Maggot for that purpose alone. However, along the way, Leo also gets to know the McMurphy side of his identity. He describes seeing Purge for the first time like seeing “McMurphy in its purest form” (103).