How do we give our lives meaning? Is it through our relationships, nurtured with nutrients of time and trust? Is it through our passions that flood across our veins with rich, thick warmth? Or is it nature? Charity? Fortitude? Each of us will have an answer that has governed us from our first bite of breakfast to our last dream before sleep. Like the characters in “The Shawshank Redemption” (1994), we all must decide for ourselves – ‘Get busy living? Or get busy dying?’ And the moment that these characters made this choice was the very moment their ultimate fate was determined.
The Shawshank Redemption’s 1994 release sent critics and academics into a spin – a spin that has since refused to unwind. Many have tried carving out the true meaning behind the prison’s complex walls. Some believed Shawshank housed a messiah, who guided his fellow prisoners towards rehabilitation; others saw a parable about retaining integrity above all else. However, in the interweaving mix of theories and studies, it is true that every man in Shawshank has a narrative – a narrative touched by the fickleness of fate, the ruthlessness of religion, the heat of hope. But what the film shows is that the outcomes of their lives depend upon one universal factor: does he have a good, moral purpose?
Originally conceived by Stephen King, the story of “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption” has become a defining depiction of the indomitable human spirit. The story follows the trial of Andy Dufresne (played by Tim Robbins), a banker who is given two life sentences for the murder of his wife and her lover, although he swears he is innocent. After arriving at Shawshank Prison, he makes the acquaintance of Red (Morgan Freeman), who is also serving a life sentence. We follow their friendship for the decades they remain at Shawshank, along with their experiences of brutality, hardship, and fleeting joy.
The narrative of “Shawshank Redemption” is akin to a set of balancing scales. The men who choose decency, redemption, and commitment are praised as heroes or gods – and are rewarded in accordance. But the men who choose deceit, violence, or passivity are smited by Judgement’s powerful hand. Director Darabont argues that only those who choose a righteous purpose in life can be afforded the diamonds of hope, and he uses Andy as his chief messenger.
Red establishes the motif of Andy’s narrative early on – narrating a scene where Andy is raped, he remarks, “prison is no fairy-tale world.” Andy Dufresne’s narrative is unorthodox, as his beginning is an ending. He is sentenced in an ice-cold courtroom for a crime he didn’t commit, and is sent to a prison where he is beaten, assaulted, and abused. Andy isn’t given a fairy godmother or a shooting star. In fact, he is presented with every reason to give up. But Andy’s protection, or as Red calls it, Andy’s “shield,” is his motivation to keep living a normal life, despite all that has happened to him.
Read More: 31 years of The Shawshank Redemption: A Film About ‘Hanging In There’
Andy defies expectations as soon as he sets foot into the prison. Red remarks that other prisoners believe Andy to be “snobby” and that, when expected to break the first night, he instead “never made a sound.” His character is defined by his unphased nature, choosing to give the grey prison slate a myriad of colours, emotions, and intonations. He carves rocks into memorabilia, gets beers for the men working on the roof, and hangs posters of nature and culture on his cell walls. But his most significant feat is his commitment to education.
Andy’s chief purpose at Shawshank becomes updating the prison library. Seemingly frozen in stasis, Andy finds it dust-laden, drab, and sparse. However, by writing letters to the state each week, he is given money, new books, fresh life. He breathes energy and intention into the space, bringing passion and culture to his apathetic peers. By committing himself to normalcy, Andy is given a metaphorical coating, protecting him from a typical prison life. And with this dedication to consistently choosing positivity, he is then given hope.
The foil between the characters Red and Brooks serves to intensify the message of purpose first, hope second. Brooks (James Whitmore), who had been Shawshank’s librarian for 50 years, and Red both get parole in the twilight of their lives. Both go on board in the same halfway house, with the same job as a bag-packer at a supermarket. However, there is a stark difference in the resolution of their respective narratives.
During his time at Shawshank, Brooks has become “institutionalized” and struggles to adapt to a world which had “got itself into a damn big hurry.” Tired of “living in fear all the time,” Brooks takes his own life. Red is driven down the exact same path. The room he boards in is the one Brooks lost all meaning in. But, where Brooks felt he had no purpose, Red remarks that the only thing stopping him from going back to prison is “a promise I made to Andy.”
Both men struggle to carve out their own identities, as they have learnt to “depend” on Shawshank’s walls. In prison, Brooks was a respected academic, and Red was “the guy that can get you things.” Both follow the same path, living lives suddenly bereft of routine and consistency. They are overwhelmed by a freedom they haven’t known for many years, left without meaning or intention. The pair etch their names into the room’s wall, their legacies marked and intertwined. But Brooks’ narrative was defined and ended with fear. Red gives himself the purpose of finding Andy, letting hope enter his life after rejecting it countless times. “Hope drives a man insane,” he once remarked, but now, it frees him.
All things must balance and oppose – light against darkness, hope against apathy, morality against villainy. And, where Darabont wanted to showcase how goodness can be rewarded, he wanted to give equal weight to those who choose poorly. An obvious example of this is Bogs (Mark Rolston). Making up one half of The Sisters, he frequently beats up Andy before raping him when he is alone. Bogs’s sole purpose within Shawshank is to violate, to pursue his own course of pleasure, and let nothing stop him. Instead of following the gilded hands of a moral compass, he chooses to forget ever having one.
The narrative is quick to dismiss and dehumanise Bogs, with Red remarking that Bogs can’t be homosexual as “you have to be human first.” And, when Bogs commits the fatal act of almost murdering Andy, he is afforded no hope, no salvation, or reformation. After choosing a selfish and destructive life, he is beaten so badly by Captain Hadley (Clancy Brown) that he never walks again. Unlike Andy and Red, who adopt principles of virtue, Bogs is driven by an insatiable and monstrous greed for violence, and is offered no hope in return.
Also Read: 10 Facts You Probably Didn’t Know About ‘The Shawshank Redemption’
Perhaps the most notorious character at Shawshank, Warden Norton (Bob Gunton), is saved for an almighty damnation. After learning of Andy’s past as a banker, the Warden arranges for him to keep the prison’s books. This eventually leads to money laundering. And, in the film’s most shocking moment, he arranges the death of an inmate who had evidence to free Andy.
Similar to Bogs, The Warden is driven by a particular kind of immorality. He chooses to keep Andy locked away, slaving over his books, in order to maintain a fuzzy façade of innocence. But Shawshank’s narrative offers him no promise of absolution. The Warden’s punishment is tripled. Andy escapes from prison, takes the money the Warden thought Andy had laundered, and sells the information to the police. The Warden’s story ends with a single bullet in the brain, a smatter of blood, and the image of Andy’s righteous face burned into his retinas.
Where Bogs openly displayed his festering malice, The Warden committed a harsher sin, i.e., he pretends to be moral. He often quotes passages from the Bible, asking that the prisoners not take the Lord’s name in vain. The Warden uses religion as a shield, lives under the pretense that he is led by God’s light. In some ways, he commits the worst moral crime by refusing all responsibility and ownership of his true nature. And thus, by forsaking his true purpose of guiding the prisoners to redemption, he is afforded no space to achieve hope.
Some believe that the men at Shawshank were chess pieces on the board of fate. They argue that nothing could’ve been done to rewrite the final sentences of their lives. That hope isn’t given or earned but provided from the universe, in whispers and in sleep. But those who stand for this forget one thing: we all have agency, even in the prisons of our lives.
By the film’s end, Red and Andy lounge by the opalescent Pacific, Bogs is stripped of his independence, and The Warden and Brooks are under the coldness of earth. Ultimately, and perhaps terrifyingly, the passages of their lives were determined by two questions: How do we give our lives meaning? How do we live our lives in order to give ourselves hope?
![Logan [2017]: A Life Lived Well](https://79468c92.delivery.rocketcdn.me/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Logan-768x432.jpg)
