A Comparison of Freedom in Secrets and Lies, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and Beloved

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Freedom in Secrets and Lies, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and Beloved

The word freedom has a different meaning for everyone based

on their individual circumstances. Webster's Dictionary also provides

many definitions for freedom, the most relevent to this paper being:

a) the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or

action; b) liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of

another. I believe that Webster's Dictionary explains freedom the best

when it states that "freedom has a broad range of application from

total absence of restraint to merely a sense of not being unduly

hampered or frustrated." Since it is really a philosophical question

whether a total absence of restraint is really possible, or even

desirable, I think mine and most people's general use of the word

tends to be more on the side of not being unduly hampered or

frustrated.

The two movies Secrets and Lies and One Flew Over the

Cuckoo's Nest, and Toni Morrison's novel Beloved all deal with

different types and degrees of freedom and the lack there of. Secrets

and Lies is about a middle-aged woman who had to grow up at a very

young age and never had the freedom to enjoy, or even have, a

childhood. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is the story of a group of

patients in a mental hospital who's routine lives are forever changed

by a newly committed patient who's life is anything but routine.

Beloved follows the shattered lives of the family of an ex-slave living

in Ohio after the end of the Civil War and the abolishment of slavery.

Even though each deal with very different circumstances, by

comparing the lives of each set of characters in these three stories

many parallels can be drawn between them. The freedom restrictions

imposed in each story are all different, yet the characters' actions are

similar. The characters go to drastic lengths when there freedoms are

infringed upon, the most drastic occuring when a newly achieved

freedom is lost. Before understanding a new freedom the characters

have no problem living without it. However once new freedoms are

realized the characters are unrelenting in their fight to preserve them.

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