Theological Reflections Papers
Cassie Carter
TH 150-Introduction to Theology
Lesson 5 Graded Assignment
Theological Topic Reflection Paper: The Shawshank Redemption After watching The Shawshank Redemption I still had a bit of trouble understanding the movie. So I also chose to read the book to give me a better comprehension of the movie as the book gives more of the hidden details that the movie lacks. The movie is about a banker named Andy Dufresne who was accused of double murder in the 1940s and began a life sentence at the fictional Shawshank prison. There he's befriended by an older inmate named Red. During his long stay in prison, Andy comes to be admired by the other inmates for his upstanding moral code and his quietly unbeatable spirit. This movie contains many themes but there are three major themes I want to reflect on.
The first theme in the movie is hope. Hope is the feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen. Hope, more than anything else, drives the inmates at Shawshank prison and gives them the will to live. Andy’s sheer determination to maintain his own sense of self-worth and escape keeps him from dying of frustration and anger in solitary confinement. Hope is an abstract, passive emotion, similar to the passive, immobile, and inert lives of the prisoners. Andy sets about making hope a reality in the form of the agonizing progress he makes each year tunneling his way through his concrete cell wall to escape. Even Andy’s even-keeled and well-balanced temperament, however, eventually succumb to the bleakness of prison life. Red notes that Tommy William’s revelation that he could prove Andy’s innocence was like a key unlocking a cage in Andy’s mind, a cage that released a tiger called Hope. This hope reinvigorates Andy and spreads too many of the other inmates in the prison. Red, for example, identified Andy as the part of himself who never let go of the idea of freedom. Red seemed frightened at the idea of freedom. He dreamt of being paroled but
TH 150-Introduction to Theology
Lesson 5 Graded Assignment
Theological Topic Reflection Paper: The Shawshank Redemption After watching The Shawshank Redemption I still had a bit of trouble understanding the movie. So I also chose to read the book to give me a better comprehension of the movie as the book gives more of the hidden details that the movie lacks. The movie is about a banker named Andy Dufresne who was accused of double murder in the 1940s and began a life sentence at the fictional Shawshank prison. There he's befriended by an older inmate named Red. During his long stay in prison, Andy comes to be admired by the other inmates for his upstanding moral code and his quietly unbeatable spirit. This movie contains many themes but there are three major themes I want to reflect on.
The first theme in the movie is hope. Hope is the feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen. Hope, more than anything else, drives the inmates at Shawshank prison and gives them the will to live. Andy’s sheer determination to maintain his own sense of self-worth and escape keeps him from dying of frustration and anger in solitary confinement. Hope is an abstract, passive emotion, similar to the passive, immobile, and inert lives of the prisoners. Andy sets about making hope a reality in the form of the agonizing progress he makes each year tunneling his way through his concrete cell wall to escape. Even Andy’s even-keeled and well-balanced temperament, however, eventually succumb to the bleakness of prison life. Red notes that Tommy William’s revelation that he could prove Andy’s innocence was like a key unlocking a cage in Andy’s mind, a cage that released a tiger called Hope. This hope reinvigorates Andy and spreads too many of the other inmates in the prison. Red, for example, identified Andy as the part of himself who never let go of the idea of freedom. Red seemed frightened at the idea of freedom. He dreamt of being paroled but