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 slave to achieve a sense of power over the master. The white men of this era attempted to keep slaves ignorant by restricting them from reading and learning about the outside world...