The movie “The Shawshank Redemption” is about Andy Dufresne, a former vice-president of a large Portland Bank. He was wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife and her lover. Thus, he ended up serving two life sentences at Shawshank State Penitentiary. The movie follows Andy’s tormenting life in prison, his friendship with a fellow inmate Ellis “Red” Redding, and Andy’s determination to claim freedom once again. When one touches the story of freedom, one may always set the tone of it through using the image of prison, which is appropriately the main setting in the movie.
Through Shawshank prison, the main theme of the movie is depicted, which is freedom or the absence of freedom thereof. Freedom is absent in the way the prisoners are unable to physically escape the place itself. A prisoner cannot choose to be with his/her loved ones because he/she is in a prison cell. Andy, who used to be a successful banker, cannot choose to keep his job because he is incarcerated. A prisoner cannot choose to live the life he wants to because of all these limitations.
Freedom is also absent in the way the prisoners are programmed to live a routinely life, adhering to strict schedules and following orders from harsh wardens. Being in Shawshank prison is also like an endless nightmare. According to Red, “Old life blown away in the blink of an eye… a long cold season in hell stretching out ahead… nothing left but all the time in the world to think about it. ” As one enters the high walls, plain bricks, thick metal bars of a cell and a bare room, one can never imagine himself/herself to survive.
The Term Paper on Prison Life Prisoners One Inmates
Prison Life Most people have no idea what it feels like to be in prison, statistically only one out of every five people will know what its like to be in prison. Approximately 1. 4 million people out of the U. S.'s 280 million people are in prison. (Thomas, 2) The only reason people know about prisons is because of the media. The news, movies, and books all contribute to people's stereotypes about ...
This can be shown by how the new fat inmate screamed for his despair and said that belongingness in that prison was not even possible. Such a routinely life, from the time he/she wakes up, eats, takes a bath, and works, adds to one’s lifelessness. The public baths and surprise inspections of cells leave no room for your privacy. A prisoner has been groomed to set some patterned behavior and this behavior becomes a habit that one cannot get rid of. Just as Moga explained in his article “Is Man Free? ” the habit controls the prisoner, most especially on occasions when
he/she is forced to act differently. An example of this in the movie is when Brooks Hatlen was freed on parole after fifty years in prison. When Brooks set Jake free and said, “You go on now. You’re free,” it seems that he was actually talking to himself. He was a free man already and that he should go and face the reality outside the walls of Shawshank. However, Brooks found himself lost in the open world, sad and hopeless. He realized that he did not belong there and that he belongs in the jail. He lost sense of the world and the will to live.
The things that kept him going, his work inside Shawshank, his friends, and his life, were snatched away from him. Thus, he committed something a man, old and deprived of his habitual lifestyle, is capable of doing; he killed himself. “These walls are funny. First you hate ’em, then you get used to ’em. After long enough, you get so you depend on ’em. That’s ‘institutionalized’. ” In addition, because of their incarceration, the prisoners in Shawshank, especially those with life sentences, felt as though all faith and hope in the future was lost. Red even says, “Let me tell you something, my friend.
Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane. ” With this loss of hope, Red lost his spiritual hold, which Frankl talks about in his article “Man’s Search for Meaning. ” Because he cannot live for the future, his life in prison becomes provisional. Hours can seem like a lifetime to him, and every day seems no different from the next, making it more lonely and burdensome to continue living. As Red puts it, “Same old sh—, different day. ” Despite the limitations and the loss of faith, Andy’s character proves that one can still get a hold of inner freedom.
The Essay on Nothing Is Free Life Love Cost
I definitely think the best things in life are not free. There are so many examples I can name. For one, every thing you want in life you have to work hard to earn it. Nothing is given to you for free. Everything in life costs you or someone else money, time, or effort. This includes all the important things in life like air, freedom, life, living, love, children, marriage, jobs, and friendships. ...
He said in the movie, “Get busy living, or get busy dying. ” He chose the former. He took advantage of the opportunities given his situation and was very determined in his decisions and actions. An example of which was how he continually wrote letters to the state government for two years to request funds and worked hard to transform a useless space in the Shawshank Prison into the best prison library in New England. A more important example would be how he hammered his way through the wall for twenty-five years and crawled through five hundred yards of
fecal matter just so he could escape. Although Andy was physically assaulted and emotionally abused by the prison guards and the warden, he endured all of it. Rather than being dragged with the bitter reality the prison had given him, Andy chose to maintain his own sense of self-worth and create goals in the hope of breaking out of imprisonment. He had an inner hold that nobody could take away from him. Truly, Andy Dufresne is a testament of Nietzsche’s words, that “he who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how. ”
