The Shawshank Redemption directed by Frank Darabont in 1994, is a story about Andy Dufrene, a man accused of murdering his wife and her lover and sentenced to two consecutive life sentences. He is shipped to Shawshank Maximum Security Prison in Maine. He finds his way to inner peace and holds on to great hope in the midst of the terror of the prison regime.
It is a story of hope, friendship, and perseverance. The film is an allegory about holding on to a personal worth in the face of dire hardship. The opening scene ‘Welcome to Shawshank’ conveys the important idea of the loss of hope.The Director uses a variety of techniques to convey this theme, such as lighting, camera angles, confront in color and dialogue. An important technique the Director, Frank Darabont uses in this sequence of Andy’s arrival at Shawshank is that of lighting. Darabont uses this technique to show the viewer hopelessness when the men are standing in a line while being addressed by head officer Hudley.
When Darabont used this technique of lighting the viewer can realize the loss of identity because the men’s faces are shadowed. Andy arrives at Shawshank in a bus.The men exit the bus and walk in a single file through the main entrance towards the entrance of the prison. Red and three other prisoners are seen leaning against the prison wall, and they are discussing which of the new ‘fish’ are going to ‘break’ first. An important technique that the director uses is that of color. Darabont uses this technique to show the audience the men’s loss of identity when the men’s uniform is shown to be the same color as the prisons wall, implying that the men have become a part of the prison itself.
The use of this technique of color makes the audience understand the lack of hope because the men are no longer free, it’s almost as if they have been swallowed up by the prison itself. Through the use of this technique, Darabont wants the viewer to realize that there is no escape from Shawshank, as they have ‘surrendered’ their identity to the shadow of the prison. Another important technique that the director utilizes in the film to show the theme is that of camera angles.
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Through the use of a crane shot at the beginning of Andy’s incarceration, it shows us the prison from a bird’s eye view, and sweeping views establish and emphasize the prison’s size, showing that there is no escape from Shawshank. We see the prison through Andy’s eyes as he enters, which the camera moves from a low angle of the entrance to an undershot which gives the viewer the impression that he is entering a place of misery, and will not emerge for a long time. Again the sheer size of the place is shown in an imposing way.The Burden of Isolation and Imprisonment Each of the inmates inside Shawshank Prison is locked up metaphorically as well as literally, hiding from himself or unable to function in the unregulated world that extends beyond the prison walls. There are many levels of isolation inside Shawshank, from the large, enclosed recreation yard to the smaller work crews down to the cellblock, cells, and, finally, solitary confinement. The prison is thus a multilayered world, a microcosm of the world outside that the prisoners have been forcibly removed from.The bars, strict schedules, sadistic keepers, and predatory Sisters only add a sense of entrapment and suffocation to these layers of isolation.
Shawshank’s confines, however, also highlight the extent to which the prisoners have isolated themselves and compromised their sense of identity. Beneath the hardened criminals lie insecure, maladjusted outcasts, many of whom believe they can’t function outside the prison system. Elwood Blatch, for example, is a braggart and an egomaniac whose exaggerated accounts of his exploits fool none of his listeners into believing that he is the master criminal whom he makes himself out to be.Red, meanwhile, identifies Andy as the part of himself who never let go of the idea of freedom. Freedom is a frightening concept for Red, who dreams of being paroled but eventually struggles to find his place in society after almost forty years in prison. Recounting Andy’s escape, therefore, allows Red to face his fears and find the psychological freedom he seeks. The Power of Hope Hope, more than anything else, drives the inmates at Shawshank 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, akin 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. Even Andy’s even-keeled and well-balanced temperament, however, eventually succumb to the bleakness of prison life.Red notes that Tommy Williams’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 to many of the other inmates in the prison. In his letter addressed to Red, Andy writes that “hope is a good thing,” which in the end is all that Red has left. Red’s decision to go to Mexico to find Andy is the ultimate proof of Red’s own redemption, not from his life as a criminal but from his compromised state, bereft of hope and with no reason to embrace life or the future.Red’s closing words, as he embarks tentatively onto a new path, show that hope is a difficult concept to sustain both inside the prison and out.
Motifs Corruption and Crime Shawshank blurs the line between right and wrong and challenges the notion that isolating and reforming criminals will turn them into law-abiding citizens. Instead, the prison is a den of corruption, greed, bribery, and money laundering. Everyone exploits the system for their own gain, from Red, who can smuggle anything into the prison, all the way up to the wardens, who profit from forced prison labor.Andy’s willingness to launder Warden Norton’s slush money initially serves as a survival technique, a means of protecting himself by extending his good will to the administration.
His complicity and knowledge of the warden’s illegal enterprises, however, keep Norton from ever releasing him for fear that Andy would reveal the warden’s secret. The fact that Shawshank is as corrupt and tainted as the outside world further justifies Andy’s escape from a hypocritical, exploitative system that cares little for the prisoners’ lives or rehabilitation.Time Time serves as both a source of torment as well as the backdrop for the slow, eventual achievement of Andy’s escape, his seemingly impossible goal for nearly twenty-eight years. Shawshank redefines the passage of time for the inmates, especially for the “lifers” like Andy and Red, who can only look forward to death. Hours can seem like a lifetime, and every day seems indistinguishable from the next, adding to the loneliness and burden of imprisonment. Ironically, however, time also proves to be the means of Andy’s escape and salvation and gives him hope throughout his quarter-century in Shawshank.An amateur geologist, Andy realizes that dripping water can erode stone over the span of several million years and that with his small rock hammer and a lot of patience, he too can break through concrete.
His devotion to chipping away at the concrete not only allows him to measure the passage of time but also gives him the sense of hope that the other inmates lack. Symbols Rita HayworthThe pinup posters of Rita Hayworth and the other women represent the outside world, hope, and every inmate’s desire to escape to a normal life. Andy admits as much when he tells Red that sometimes he imagines stepping right through the photograph and into another life. More literally, Rita Hayworth really does remind Andy of his desire to actually break out of Shawshank because of the chiseled hole in the concrete that the posters conceal. As a result, Rita Hayworth embodies the sense of hope that keeps Andy alive and sane and distinguishes him from the other inmates.
Even though it takes Andy more than twenty-five years to hammer his way through the wall, the mere fact that he has something to work for keeps him from lapsing into bouts of self-pity as the other inmates do. Having a mission and something to look forward to—even before he knew he would use the hole to break out—kept Andy alive and gave him his “inner light. ” Rocks The rocks Andy sculpts serve as a cover to justify owning a rock hammer, but they also represent the spirit of hope that he exudes. As an amateur geologist, Andy is undoubtedly distracted from the doldrums of daily prison life by the rocks.Continuing to pursue his hobby gives him a sense of normality and control over his life that many other inmates lack. Displaying his collection of polished rocks on the windowsill of his cell also gives Andy a sense of accomplishment and means to measure the passage of time.
More important, however, sculpting the pebbles give Andy hope and a means to fend off despair. Giving these sculptures away to Red and other inmates also represents Andy’s ability to transfer his sense of hope—his “inner light” as Red calls it—to some of the other inmates.
