The Shawshank Redemption and the Power of Hope

In this movie, a banker named Andy Dufresne is convicted of killing his girlfriend and her secret lover. He is sentenced to a life term at The Shawshank State Prison. In prison, Andy becomes friends with Red, who can smuggle things from outside. Andy very soon became familiar with the ugly realities of prison life. A corrupt warden, cruel guards, led by Capt. Byron Hadley and inmates who use rape or beatings to show their existence. After all this, Andy has the sincere hope of innocent; he never cracks. Andy uses his banking skills to get favors from Warden and the guards. Andy has to do the books for Norton’s illegal business schemes. In exchange, he was improving the prison library and the life of most of the inmates, including Red. In the article ‘What a simple library can mean,’ Jeff Little argues that the library in The Shawshank Redemption is a symbol of hope because the library made the prisoners feel independent. The library gave the prisoners confidence of getting educated. Being educated tells what are you capable of. I agree with Little’s argument but believe that the library also demonstrates how Andy never gave up trying to build the library. Andy kept on writing letters with the hope that one day he would get funding to build the library. Andy was sent to the prison library, where he sets up a make-shift desk to provide services to other guards with income tax returns and other financial advice. There Andy sees an opportunity to expand the prison library. He starts asking the Maine state senate for funds. Andy starts writing letters. It took him a few years, but eventually, it worked, and he received some aid and supply of donated books. After receiving those books and funds, he now begins writing two letters a week with the hope that he might start getting more donated books and funds. Andy Dufresne was the main character who struggled to improve the library and to make it a better and peaceful place in prison. It became a project for him to keep him busy in prison. He talks about how the prison was such a violent place, and if they did anything wrong, the guards would beat them close to death. Andy experienced great injustice of imprisonment. In film, themes are often expressed through the use of symbols. The Shawshank Redemption relies on many symbols to communicate the idea of hope, including success, dedication, and normality. When Andy first talked to Red, he had the belief that Red would get him what he wants because Red was the one who had access to contraband. The Shawshank Redemption makes it clear that Andy’s influence saves Red. Andy’s sense of inner peace and hopefulness powerfully affect him, inspiring him to make a determination, and a non-complaining attitude leads to his release. What happens when Red is released is even more telling. The film has shown his outside film, clearly following in the footsteps of Brooks, Brooks was also a prisoner who was released sometime before Red. Brooks had been so afraid of releasing that he threatened to kill another person than to be released from prison. His sad life outside prison in a world Andy no longer knows or understands ends in his suicide. Red follows the same pattern, he got hired in the same store, and he was living in the same apartment. Instead of killing himself, he takes the lifeline offered by Andy before his escape: he breaks his parole and goes to find his friend in Mexico. Andy is living a successful life in Mexico, so hopefully, Red will also be successful. The Shawshank Redemption includes many scenes that resonate with the theme of hope. One especially powerful scene is the scene when Brooks releases his bird Jake from prison. Brooks found a small crow named Jake, who had fallen out of a nest near the license plate shop and was caring for him during his stay in prison, but as he leaves, he lets Jake go free. This scene exemplifies the theme of hope because this represents Brooks letting go of any hope he has of surviving life on the outside. Another compelling view is the poster of Rita Hayworth pinned to Andy’s cell wall. This scene exemplifies the theme of hope because it represents the freedom to the outside world and Andy’s desire to escape to a healthy life. The poster hides a hole in the wall, and as a result, Rita Hayworth keeping Andy sane and alive with a hope that he will escape one day from the prison walls. Although it took Andy 20 years to escape through the walls of prison.

Music becomes a recurring symbol for freedom for the prisoners of Shawshank. In one scene, we watch as Andy locks himself inside the Warden’s office and plays a record over the loudspeaker. At that moment, all of the prisoners stop what they’re doing and listen. For that small period, they all experience a piece of freedom that renews hope within them all. Music is a great way to convey the idea of freedom, which restores faith within them all. Music is a great way to communicate the concept of sovereignty because teenagers who are struggling with problems turn to music as a sanctuary from those issues and to escape reality. The symbol appears again when Andy gives Red a harmonica as a gift, and then Red plays a single note later on in his cell alone. This scene represents the necessity of hope through the harmonica being a sign of if you can play it, you are not falling to the sense of institutionalization within Shawshank prison.

In the first quarter of the film, when Andy was analyzing everything in prison, he noticed that Red had access to many things. He can get a lot of prohibited items through connections within prison. So Andy decided to ask Red to get him the rock hammer because Andy knows that Red is the man who knows how to get things. Andy agreed on the price which Red gave him to get the rock hammer for him, and that’s how Andy got the rock hammer. After getting the rock hammer, Andy had the hope that now he can continue his hobby of collecting rocks.

The Shawshank Redemption is a moving story of hope. Most of the characters are prisoners, but still, this exciting story has incredibly outstanding characteristics. Andy is persistent. He is quick and convincing. As well as well-groomed and a man of great personality, which made him a role model for prison inmates. His positive character always restores hope in the inmates. We can see his positive attitude in the movie when he plays the music through a loudspeaker in the library. In this film, Andy is the lead character of the significant force hope because Andy is the one who restores faith in Red. Red was heading for the same mistake as Brooks, but Andy changes his way of thinking and brings him hope to start a new life. From Andy’s character, we can learn that life is a symbol of hope. Hope brings a change in life.

With confidence, one can be successful. Andy always has the spirit of breaking out of the prison; that is why he never gave up on digging the hole in the wall. This movie is based on prison life. Many films deal with prison or life of jail, but The Shawshank Redemption did a great job of giving the real feeling of what prison life is all about. This movie brings forth many situations such as corruption, educational programs, government funding. From this movie, we can say that prison life is not easy. This movie shows cruelties that inmates deal with while in prison, which tells us imprisonment is not comfortable at all, but inmates must keep hope day after day. In prison, the inmates are allowed to go out in the yard; they can lift, they can do anything to make the stay more comfortable. In the film, a pack of cigarettes is used as money, a way to get things in prison. All these utilities in prison help inmates from not losing their hope of living a healthy life.

The story of Orange Is the New Black by Piper Kerman is about a 30+ years old woman sentenced to fifteen months in prison. She was convicted of a decade-old crime of transporting money for her drug-dealing girlfriend and is ‘starved out’ by a sizeable Russian inmate known as ‘Red.’ If we compare the characters of The Shawshank Redemption and Orange Is the New Black, we can see that the main character in both of these is highly educated and wealthy. Andy from The Shawshank Redemption and Piper from Orange Is the New Black, both of them are smart, intelligent and hard workers. The film The Shawshank Redemption and the novel Orange Is the New Black are both based on prison life. In the movie, they probably have shown more cruelties than in the case of the novel, and that is because the film is about male prison, and the story is about female prison. Piper Kerman from Orange is the new black on her first day in prison was very frightened.

Women began to approach her, and she was very scared, there were sketchy people in jail whom Piper has to deal with. Whereas for Andy, he became an essential asset to the Warden and the prison staff because of his accounting. He was exempt from manual labor and harassment by his fellow inmates. He wrote letters to the state for six years, asking for books and funds to help build a prison library. After he succeeds, he is thrown in the hole for playing a song over the speaker so the entire prison can hear. Andy became a symbol of hope for most people in jail and was considered as the smartest guy in prison, which he also proved after. One of the reasons why he became the symbol of hope was he built the library for inmates to possibly learn and get educated in jail. The difference is they don’t beat women in prison. They have to wait in line for hours to get food. They have to deal with sexual harassment, and they have to listen to the jail superintendent at all times. With all this, both of them have the hope that one day they will be released and they will live a healthy life again as they used to live before.

From the article ‘The Burden of Innocence: Coping with a Wrongful Imprisonment,’ written by Kathryn Campbell and Myriam Denov, I learned that the objective of this study was to show how people managed to cope with many years of wrongful imprisonment. The literature indicates that while there is a burgeoning body of research examining factors that impact on wrongful convictions, input has been notably absent from the wrongly convicted persons themselves.

This tells that the criminal justice system does little to facilitate their exoneration. The value of this study extends beyond the results of the data: the wrongly convicted have much to contribute to an understanding of how such miscarriages of justice occur, and their experiences should help inform future policy in this regard. We can relate this article to the movie ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ with the theme of hope. Even in these circumstances, the prisoners have the desire that one day, they will be discharged from prison and will live a normal life.

At first glance, I thought of The Shawshank Redemption as a film about prison, but after careful consideration, I’ve come to realize that the film also sends a strong message about hope. This movie helped me to understand what prison is like and how people in prison live and why some of them end up committing suicide or losing hope. I have also learned that life was difficult for people who get released from jail; they will always have trouble finding a job, their life will be a pain for few years, and it will take several years to clean the criminal record. The true essence of hope must be within the minds of anyone who is trying to get through a robust and ugly situation like Andy.

Works Cited

1. Darabont, Frank. ‘The Shawshank Redemption.’ Release date: September 23, 1994. Rev.
2. Young, Stephen Dine. ‘Movies as Equipment for Living: A developmental Analysis of the Importance of Film in Everyday Life.’ Critical Studies in Media Communication. Vol. 17, No. 4, December 2000, pp.447-468. Print.
3. Little, Jeff. ‘what a Simple Library Can Really Mean.’ Journal of correctional education. Vol. 49, Issue 1, March 1998. Print.
4. Kerman, Piper. ‘Orange Is the New Black: my year in a women’s prison.’ Random House. Issue 2011. Print.
5. Campbell, Kathryn and Denov, Myriam. ‘The Burden of Innocence: Coping with a Wrongful Imprisonment.’ Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Issue January 2004. Rev.