One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest And The Crucible Analysis

The novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and the play The Crucible, both display a woman’s ability to manipulate men in societies where they were virtually powerless. Kesey used Nurse Ratched in his novel as an example of a female manipulator in the time period of the late 1950s or early 1960s where women were still seen as subservient citizens that should be in the home. Miller on the other hand, used the character Abigail as a manipulator of men in his play which was set in a Puritan society of the late 1600s where women had a small fraction of the rights that women had during the time of Kesey’s novel. In both of these literary works both women which were antagonists, used their “power” to manipulate the men around them to achieve their …show more content…
Her desire to be with John Proctor after their affair fueled her decision to falsely accuse Elizabeth Proctor of witchcraft in hopes of getting her sentenced to death. Abigail “achieves awesome evil because of her firm resolution to lose everyone to her vicious purposes and her dangerous ability to pervert the sacred task of bearing witness.”(Aziz and Al Qunayeer 242) By “pervert[ing] the sacred task of bearing witness” in the court, she obtained power in a society where women essentially didn’t have any(Aziz and Al Qunayeer 242). Ironically, this power she obtained came from Judge Danforth and the court, who like most of the men in a Puritan society would scoff at the idea that a woman could influence or fool them. However, the men in the court were duped into unknowingly giving a young girl the power to select who she wants to be killed. When Judge Danforth and the court eventually realized the error of their ways, they refused to do anything to rectify it in fear that the town of Salem would lose respect and faith in them as men who are supposed to uphold the teachings of God and bring about justice in the