This essay compares Ken Kesey and Harriot Jacobs' use of fear and control in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.

Subject  > Literature Research Papers  > North American

Fear and Control of the Unknown Throughout history many communities have been persecuted for being different from the general public. Society has often forced these unique individuals to assimilate or be constrained because of the public's fear and anxiety of the unknown. Such insecurities led to the mistreatment and restraint of both the slaves as portrayed in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and the mental patients in One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. One of the most apparent and important themes in both One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is control. Fear is used as a means to gain control over the slave by their master or even by the ...

... into virtual replicas of one another and tranquilizing the unique "completely out of existence" (Kesey xiv). The book takes place during the American public's fear of the foreign communist takeover and Kesey attempts to compare the fear of foreign influence to fears of the atypical person deemed by society to be "mentally disabled." Jacobs' central motivation for the creation of her memoir was to alert the women of the north to the atrocities of slavery on the southern states. She accomplished this by creating a sentimental novel formatted in this way as to appeal to her target audience. Stressing her own fears of her master and of recapture, she used often very direct personal pleas

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