A Comparison of Freedom in Secrets and Lies, One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, and Beloved :: comparison compare contrast essays

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