Analysis of Shawshank Redemption

The movie of the Shawshank Redemption is based on a short story by

Steven King. The movie shows how prison life affects prisoners during

their sentence in jail and after when they are released. The director

concentrates mostly on the personal cost of adapting to prison life

and how some convicts, once they conform, lose the ability to survive

beyond the barbed wire and iron bars. As a character puts it, ‘These

[prison] walls are funny. First you hate them, then you get used to

them, then you start to depend on them.’ The director shows us to what

extent prisoners can be made to ‘depend on them’. The two episodes

that I will analyse are examples of two different ‘paths’ prisoners

can take once released from prison. One is to survive and live their

life, another is to give up and end it. In the movie Red, a prisoner

at Shawshank says, ‘get busy living or get busy dying’. This quote

plays an important role in the movie because Red and Brooks, two

important characters who get out of jail have to make the choice to

either ‘get busy living or get busy dying’.

Red and Brooks are characters with many similar traits and have gone

through many of the same circumstances. Both entered the confines of

Shawshank Prison youths but left its walls as old men. They have seen

many prisoners come in and out. They spent decades behind the dull

enclosure and got used to it. They have adapted themselves to the

concepts of routine, forced conformity, power abuse and have lost all

elements of individuality within themselves. Red says “you come here

for your life and that’s exactly what they take from you”.

The episodes of the release of both men contri...

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...ds hug, the camera

pulls back, revealing the wide, distant horizon of the blue Pacific

with no end in sight. No longer are the Red and Andy confined by walls

and iron bars nor watched on by guards. Both are free.

Brooks had attained the limits at prison, he had become

institutionalised and once released had found the only way out was

death. Red, on the other hand, had hoped, and hope had led him to

freedom, to happiness, to redemption.

Through the themes and the cinematic decisions applied in these two

episodes the director has made these vital to the understanding of the

movie. He has given two examples of the extreme situations to which

prisoners go depending on their emotions. One of the emotions is yet

one of the main themes of the movie, hope, and in my opinion it has

been brought up extremely effectively.