The Shawshank Dedemption and the Hope for Freedom

by Christopher Barr

“We just philosophize, complain of boredom, or drink vodka.  It’s so clear, you see, that if we’re to begin living in the present, we must first of all redeem our past and then be done with it forever.  And the only way we can redeem our past is by suffering and by giving ourselves over to exceptional labor, to steadfast and endless labor.”    - Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard

“Get busy living or get busy dying.”

The Shawshank Redemption was a masterful film about the road to freedom.  It tells the story of a successful banker, Andy Dufresne, wrongly convicted of murdering his wife and her lover.  He is sent to Shawshank Prison in New England where he spends the better part of two decades, never losing hope in spite of the dreadful consequences of prison life.

“These prison walls are funny. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, gets so you depend on them. That's institutionalized. They send you here for life, that's exactly what they take. The part that counts anyways.”

Shawshank is about not giving up on yourself, not allowing fear to dictate what you do or don’t do with your life.  Andy maintained hope when others around him didn’t, like is best friend on the inside, Red.  Red let the fear of those prison walls get the best of him until he met Andy and he gave him hope.  Teaching him that not only is hoping a good thing but the best thing.

The film is about hope and friendship but it is quite critical of religion.  Religion in this film and in life is the oppressor, it’s what keeps us caged and obedient and it is used in this film for that very reason.  The Warden is a man of faith, living his life by the teachings in the ‘good book’ but is also a horrible, detestable man as well.

Institutionalization is very much a theme that runs throughout the film.  Focusing on an older man named Brooks, who was the prison librarian.  There’s a scene in the film where Brooks holds a knife to another inmate’s throat ready to kill him.  It’s later discovered that Brooks was paroled and was afraid of leaving, so he figured if he killed someone they would let him stay.  Brooks has been at Shawshank for 50 years and now he was a free man, living in the fast moving world.  But that freedom terrified the man to the point of suicide, hanging himself his a crappy old apartment.  This was what he believed was his only way out, later when Red is released we are led to believe that he too might kill himself, but he doesn’t because Andy taught that there is more to life then to be afraid of it.

“There's not a day goes by that 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 to 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 gotta live with that. Rehabilitated? It's just a bullshit word. So go ahead and stamp your forms, sonny, and stop wasting my time. Because to tell you the truth, I don't give a shit.”

How do we live with ourselves?  How do we live with the things we’ve done to ourselves to those around us?  How do we seek redemption?  We do it by first forgiving ourselves because we are not the sum of all our parts.  People make mistakes and lives get lost but we must live on, we must exist, we must never forget the bad things we did in our past, with the hope to never repeat them.  That’s redemption, living with what you have done but not letting it sink you into despair.

For Andy, the poster of Rita Hayworth on his cell wall became his window to freedom, at first figuratively then quite literally.  The fantasy of Rita Hayworth helped fuel his need to escape, she became his hope and his light in such a dark and dank place.  Then at the end, Andy went through a poster of Raquel Welch to access his tunnel and crawl to his freedom.

Many of the inmates, after being in the prison for a while become dependent on its routines and schedules, to such a degree that escaping was not even an option.  But for Andy staying was not an option as he fought to maintain his humanity in an institution that only wishes to strip it away.  Andy in the beginning had it rough, being raped and beaten on many occasions, but he stuck to his plan of escape like a true chess player, a plan no one saw coming.  But he did it because he realized that the meaning of life starts from within ourselves and freedom is for us to live our lives on our own terms, not behind the prison walls of oppression but on the sandy beaches of Mexico.

“I find I'm so excited I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it is the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. 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.”