The Crucible/Cuckoo's nest com

             Texts: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey;
             The Crucible, Nicholas Hytner production of Arthur Miller's screenplay
             Question: Explain how the authors of the two texts present similar ideas, although they tell different stories.
             When ideas surpass both time and place, it is only logical that different authors presenting the theories in separate texts can maintain synonymous perceptions whilst creating superficially unrelated stories. A most clear example of this fact is witnessed in the comparison of Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and Nicholas Hytner's film adaptation of Arthur Miller's screenplay, The Crucible. Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest centres around a battle for the minds and souls of a group of mental patients between a dehumanising, conformist bureaucracy known as the "Combine", and naturalist, patriarchal individualism, which are represented by Kesey's characters "the Big Nurse" and "R.P. McMurphy" respectively. Apparently quite separately, The Crucible is based on the tragedy of the Salem witch trials of the nineteenth century, where mass hysteria goes hand in hand with sinister manipulation to take hundreds of innocent lives, revealing with the aid of a number of subplots that hell indeed has no fury like that of a woman spurned: especially a powerful and manipulative woman like the character "Abigail Williams".
             At first glance these texts appear related only in their high quality of their drama. However, upon closer examination, many similarities are revealed; in particular, parallels between the messages both authors impart. Despite obvious differences in each text's setting, plot, and characters, both Kesey, and Hytner through Miller, have forwarded similar ideas in their texts; perceptions of people and society in general that remain valid no matter what or whom the era or individual either author has utilised.
             One of the most obvious of the authors' shared perceptio...

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