shawshank redemption personal response

Title: The Shawshank Redemption
Director: Frank Darabont

In the movie the character Andy Dufresne played by Tim Robbins is sent to Shawshank prison on a double life sentence for killing his wife and her lover. In the prison he befriends Red, played by Morgan Freeman. Andy spends out his sentence helping the guards with tax returns and such and eventually he is laundering the corrupt money in which the prison makes. He is blackmailed by the warden when he says he is out so he escapes through a hole in his cell which he had been working on for his whole sentence, He escapes successfully. Red applies for parole which is granted and he goes to a spot which Andy has told him about and recieves money and instructions to go and meet Andy where they shall work together legitimately.

Morgan Freeman’s character says this “These walls are funny. First you hate ‘em. Then you get used to ‘em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them thats institutionalized.” This concept of institutionalized was shown mostly through the character of Brooks Hatlen played by James Whitmore. He was an old man who had been in the prison for most of his life and when he is granted parole he threatens to kill one of his friends just so he could stay in prison. when he’s out he talks about how he doesn’t know anything about the world now and how its changed, so in his Hotel room he hangs himself after carving “Brooks was here” into the wall. This shows just how much some people rely on prison when they’ve been in long enough. Brooks also shows his institutionalization when he holds a knife to one of his friend’s throat and he says this “if I do this I can stay” at this time nobody else knew he had been granted parole. I believe he was institutionalized because in prison he was a smart educated man who could help but out in the world he was just an old con. Red says this “He should’ve died in here.”

Another of the main themes in the film was hope and this is sowed throughout the movie in many different characters but mostly in Andy. Toward the end of the film, Red, who no longer has his friend to talk to, says, “I have to remind myself that some birds aren’t meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice. Still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they’re gone. I guess I just miss my friend.” Andy’s absence causes Red a great deal of sadness, but not without an understanding on Red’s behalf. Of course, Red isn’t beyond his own regrets. During one of his parole board hearings he says, “There’s not a day goes by I don’t feel regret. Not because I’m in here, or because you think I should. I look back on the way I was then: a young, stupid kid who committed that terrible crime. I want to talk to him. I want to try and talk some sense to him, tell him the way things are. But I can’t. That kid’s long gone and this old man is all that’s left. I got to live with that.” What happens when we have regrets? Do we simply ignore them? Forget about them? Or do we find ways of living with them? What is the best way to handle regret? Andy says, “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.” And as the film concludes, Red contemplates, “I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend, and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.”