There is one scene in "The Shawshank Redemption" that would seem apt to the film’s being an adaptation of a story by Stephen King, whose epithet is “the master of horror.” It is toward the end and is of a man on a rope in a horizontal shaft, the view partially obscured by cobwebs and with lightning flashes in the background. Yet, "The Shawshank Redemption" is not a horror film. That being said, though, there is perhaps more real horror in it than in many movies made to scare its audience. For its horror is the horror of prison life – fictionalized, sure, but all the same, very much real.
I am looking at the movie in this piece to mark its 30 years since its first release. The film did not initially do well, but since then, it has deservedly become a classic, as it is a flawless work of art. Owing to its age, the film will be covered in its entirety, including its very final scene, as this piece is written with the expectation of familiarity with it. Thus, those who have not seen it might want to leave this piece or watch it before continuing.
The setting for most of the film is the Gothic-looking Shawshank State Prison. The character of Ellis Boyd Redding, or simply Red, played by Morgan Freeman, narrates the events of the film as the inmate “who can get it for you” – that is, the connected con who can supply other inmates wants. As part of his narration, Red declares that “prison is no fairy-tale world.” This prison certainly is not. There are live maggots in the food, a gang that rapes fellow inmates, and the sadistic captain of the guards Hadley (Clancy Brown), who can beat prisoners so severely as to leave them paralyzed or dead. There is also the corrupt warden Norton (Bob Gunton), who uses prison labor to make himself rich through bribery and embezzlement and who proves willing to murder to defend his profitable business. Then there is the monotony – not only that of solitary confinement, for which “a week ... is like a year,” but the regular humdrum existence of prison life. This is reflected cinematographically by the fact that most of the films that take place in the prison are of such dull coloring that they render it almost monochrome.
The ancient philosopher Heraclitus, who was from the western Anatolian city of Ephesus, affirms that it is through contrasting negatives that we can truly recognize the power of positives. Thus, “disease makes health sweet and good; hunger, satiety, weariness and repose.” Indeed, the reason for the enduring popularity of "The Shawshank Redemption" is that while the viewer is given a full view of the horror of prison life, the sharp life-affirming contrasts made to this squalid existence are all the brighter and more impactful against it. These contrasts spring from Andy Dufresne, played by Tim Robbins. In this realistic character-driven drama, he, as the main character, is the center of the viewer’s focus all the way from the night he drunkenly toys with a gun while harboring murderous thoughts toward his wife through his trial for her murder and that of her lover, his 1947 conviction and his long incarceration in Shawshank Prison, to his escape and the brief glimpse of his free life under the invigorating sun of Mexico at the end.
In prison, Dufresne is known as the “wife-killing banker.” Despite having had homicidal ideations toward his spouse, Dufresne is later revealed in the film as not responsible for the murders. That the inmate who is guilty, when imprisoned, might be able to find a modicum of solace in the thought that, at least in some sense, they deserve to be where they are. For an incarcerated innocent, though, even this would be lacking them. That must be one of the toughest ordeals a human being can be put through.
That Dufresne is just about able to stand it speaks volumes to his compelling character. This is especially notable as a mainly reserved, softly-spoken and patient person willing to play the long game, reflected in his love of chess, he is almost the antithesis of the muscular cocky action heroes generally infesting the cinema. Also, in appearance, Dufresne is an unprepossessing figure. Indeed, Red, who first sees him in a line of new convicts being brought to the prison, says of him, “I admit I didn’t think much of Andy the first time I laid eyes on him. It looked like a stiff breeze would blow him over.” Red even loses a bet that of all the new inmates or “fresh fish,” Dufresne will be the first to crack in his new environment psychologically. However, Red later comes to recognize the formidable inner strength of Dufresne, who with his “quiet way about him,” carries himself “like he had on an invisible coat that would shield him from this place.”
The weight of his ordeal seems to stop him physically, but he also appears able to carry the weight. It is to Robbins’s credit that he plays such an understated figure so brilliantly. For Dufresne, heroism initially consists of attempting to keep a low profile to protect his inner self from being corrupted by his new surroundings. This is made especially difficult by his becoming a target for the aforementioned prison gang. Dufresne’s greatness is kept within the bounds of realism by Red’s affirmation that had he not eventually been freed from them, “this place would have got the best of him.”
What brings about Dufresne’s escape from these odious people results from one of the key moments in the film. Assigned to be part of a work detail on the roof of one of the prison buildings, Dufresne overhears Hadley revealing to the other guards that he is set to inherit some money, but he is irate as he feels that much of it will be lost in tax. Dufresne approaches Hadley and directly asks him if he trusts his wife. The response to such a provocative remark is for Dufresne to be held by the throat at the edge of the building, but Dufresne then tells Hadley that through his wife, he can keep his inheritance “tax-free” and that he can help him sort it all out for the price of “three beers apiece for each of my co-workers.”
With his knowledge of finance now revealed to the prison authorities, Dufresne can find security and a better position within the prison walls. In his partial revelation of what had been his closed character, though, Dufresne now reflects the reality that a new problem is often brought about in the solution to an older one. While not exactly an “out of the frying pan and into the fire” situation, the recognition of Dufresne’s financial acuity makes him indispensable to the corrupt warden, so when Dufresne later unexpectedly learns of a way to clear his name, the warden prevents it. Although Dufresne is eventually able to outmaneuver the warden and escape the prison altogether, it is his continual and mostly quiet repudiation of the ethos of prison that his real heroism lies.
This repudiation consists largely of his refusal to diminish his fundamental humanity or that of others. Dufresne, who is assigned prisoner No. 37927, learning on his first full day there of the beating to death of the inmate mentioned above, asks the older inmates, “What was his name?” This reflects his determination not to let the prison act as a machine of dehumanization. Moreover, he is philanthropic toward the other inmates, bringing humanity out in them as well. For instance, when the beers were secured for the work crew, Red said, “We sat and drank with the sun on our shoulders and felt like free men.” Also, once he has greater influence in the prison, Dufresne, through his philanthropy, establishes what Red calls the “best prison library in New England,” through which he also helps the inmates who want to get their school certificates.
Furthermore, Dufresne subtly tries to ensure the maximum possible degree of equality between himself and the prison establishment when possible. Thus, when the other guards wish to use Dufresne’s financial skills, Dufresne helps them, but in doing so, gets them to sit down opposite him and establishes equality between them, even if only for the duration of their interview.
Not only are helping others and mutual respect depicted as necessary sources of humanity, but beauty is as well. In Dufresne’s second-greatest act of rebellion, he takes over the warden’s office and plays “Che soave zeffiretto” from Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro on the record player through the warden’s microphone so that the music can sound through all of the prisons. This sudden eruption of the most sublime of music arrests all of the inmates. Red remarks on this: I like to think (the opera singers) were singing about something so beautiful it can’t be expressed in words and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab cage and made those walls disappear. And for the briefest moments, every last man at Shawshank felt free.
Once again, the squalid environment plays an important contrasting role, this time in revealing the true emotive power of art. It is also shown to provide its admirer with inner positivity. When his punishment in solitary confinement for the playing of the record has been completed, Dufresne tells other inmates that “the beauty of music” allows a man to “forget there are places in the world that aren’t made out of stone. There’s something inside they can’t get to, that they can’t touch, that’s yours. Hope.” The issue of Hope will be returned to below.
Another compelling aspect of the film is the friendship formed between Red and Dufresne. At the time of the release of the film, the “Black best friend” trope was common in cinema and television. It could be regarded as an advance from the lack of or limited roles offered to African American actors in the past, but if an advance, it was not too much of one. For the friendships often seemed contrived and unnatural, reflecting their crowbarring in. In contrast, the friendship between Dufresne and Red in "The Shawshank Redemption" is pure and natural. The reason for this is that it develops very slowly in that undemonstrative manner that enables it to become, through mutual support, a solid lifelong connection. For instance, around two years into Dufresne’s sentence, Red declares to him, “We’re getting to be kind of friends, aren’t we?” to which the latter replies, “Yeah, I guess.” It is only after many more years have gone by that Red and Dufresne are clearly, as Red puts it, “old friends.”
On the negative side, that such a film mainly set in such a hellish prison should produce a suicide is unsurprising. What might be a surprise to viewers, though, is that the figure who takes his life – the affable Brooks, played by James Whitmore – does so after he is released. Through Brooks, the film perceptively investigates the question of institutionalization. Before his release, Brooks is incarcerated for half a century, making prison, as Red puts it, “all he knows.” Moreover, Brooks has found some self-esteem in his role as a prison librarian. It is thus hard not to see the released Brooks having to rapidly pack groceries in a supermarket as having effectively been demoted in status. He is also thrown into a world that is indifferent to him and to which he is totally unadapted. On top of this, the released Brooks is now cut off from all his social contacts inside. In his suicide note, he states, “I don’t like it here. I’m tired of being afraid all the time. I’ve decided not to stay.”
This leads us to what perhaps can be considered the major theme of the film, which must also explain why the film is such a favorite. Linguistically, the opposite of hope must be hopelessness. The film, however, more discerningly juxtaposes hope with fear. With their roaming mind, humans often project themselves into the future. The coloring of their future expectation will engender feelings in the present of either hope or fear. In Brook’s case, fear overwhelms him to the point that he can no longer stand it. Yet, hope is not facilely shown as a positive opposite. The film also raises the question as to whether hope may actually be a curse. For instance, Red rebukes Dufresne with, “Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane. It’s got no use on the inside.” As such, in this hellish prison, Red is unwittingly reflecting the “abandon all hope, you who enter here” above the entrance of Dante’s Inferno and holds hope in the same regard as the myth that places it as one of the ills for humanity in Pandora’s Box.
The reason is that hope makes one dream of better things, rendering adaptation to a lesser reality more difficult. If this Hope progressively remains out of reach, the failure to adapt to reality results in a deeper state of despair than would otherwise have been engendered and can then destroy the person.
Dufresne, though, feels that there is only one choice facing the inmate, and surely us also in the wider world. It is a “simple choice – get busy living or dying.” For him, to give up on hope is to give up on life altogether. Dufresne’s hope is set on life in the Mexican Pacific town of Zihuatanejo. It sustains him through prison and gives him a goal for when he escapes. Conversely, a lack of hope is shown not as allowing for adaptation but as enabling fear and removing any reason to live and causing Brooks to take his life.
Upon his release toward the film's end, the realist Red faces the same difficulty as Brooks. He reveals that now, out in the unfamiliar world, he feels “afraid all the time.” Discovering a letter that Dufresne left for him when he escaped, he tells Red that “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies,” Red’s fear is wholly transformed into the hope of meeting Dufresne down in Mexico. Indeed, when Red sets off southwards, he exclaims that he is “so excited I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it is the excitement that only a free man can feel. A free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain.” In his ecstatic anticipation, he also says, “I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope” – the last two words markedly being the last of the entire film. Also, the Pacific is indeed shown to be so azure as to wash away the drab colorlessness of prison memory. This emphasis on hope, an emphasis made more powerful by the prison's hopeless environment, particularly makes this film so inspiring and has helped to ensure it has become deeply loved 30 years after its release.
