The contradiction in instructional supervisors' roles between helping and rating teachers raises questions about the nature of supervisory authority. Three novels--Golding's "Lord of the Flies," Huxley's "Brave New World," and Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"--illustrate the general problem of combining social control with individual freedom. Teacher supervision is a special case of the general concept of social control, and the question of balancing supervisors' control and teachers' individual freedom is but a specific instance of the larger problem. Part of the difficulty arises from the lack of a clear definition of the purposes and functions of instructional supervision. Discussion by various writers on the purposes of teacher supervision indicates that supervisors need to be enlightened, to work to improve performance, and to help teachers to be free to function better. With such an understanding, supervisors would be more oriented toward teacher growth than teacher defects and would foster a more collaborative relationship with teachers. (Author/RW)