Shawshank Reading Journal
Free will: that’s it. Andy’s life was ruined with twenty eight years of prison life. What he had made for his life before meant nothing more to him when he was convicted of murder and sent to prison. He was a murderer, a life-sentencer and he would not be able to live the rest of his life like what he had lived before. That is the punishment prisoners get-a completely ruined life, and a ruined piece of art can not be a masterpiece. Once prisoner was a permanent prisoner, and when Brooks obeyed to this rule Andy didn’t: he made his life a masterpiece, finally after a persistent, almost thirty years of effort and hope.
The whole book is about free will and how humans react upon their destinies. Stephen King introduces the idea of ‘hope’ also, as an indispensable qualification of one acting free will. The destiny that suffocates the prisoners in Shawshank is institutionalizing them to the system of Shawshank. Bathroom time, twenty five minutes after hour, was given for Red and of thirty eight years doing that he always went to the bathroom exactly twenty five after hour. Brooks, who didn’t know what to do after when he was paroled, died after a year of his parole. Shawshank told him what to do, when to pee, when to eat, what to sleep, and everything else. ‘Shawshank was his world,’ and his world was somewhere filled with directions and paved roads.
Red wrote: ‘My boss didn’t like me. He was a young guy, twenty-six or seven, and I could see that I sort of disgusted him, the way a cringing, servile old dog that crawls up to you on its belly to be petted will disgust a man. Christ, I disgusted myself. But … I couldn’t make myself stop. I wanted to tell him: That’s what a whole life in prison does for you, young man. It turns everyone in a position of authority into a master, and you into every master’s dog. (p.103)’
A dog was it: what the world made their people. A dog under the master never has to worry about what it should do or where it should sleep: it is already provided by its master, and the dog also can never tell what it wants to have for its lunch. It is because that is also determined by its master. The prisoners were the dogs.
Andy Dufresne was in that ‘shithouse’ and it that ‘hell’, the place where turns human beings into dogs. He however, did not let himself to be one of the dogs, and instead of letting his master to do it, he handled his life. He was safe from the sisters with his own power: trade with the warden and the guards. He had his own world, the library. He cultivated his own world with endless effort: writing letters for financial support, widening the place, diversifying the kind of books. Mostly, he prepared the life out of prison-he knew he would never end his life in prison, and he will repaint his life. He prepared so meticulously that he had no problems at all after he broke the prison: the fake identity was perfect, and Andy succeeded.
The tool ‘hope’ also comes up as a main theme of the book. The cover of another book of this has this sentence on it: Fear can hold you prisoner, hope can set you free. Without hope, Andy would have never made his success: after all, he would have never started if he did not hope. Every step he took required him to be hopeful. First, the trial: he was accused of murder-something he never did-right after he saw her wife cheating with some golf pro. It seemed perfectly, that he was the murderer: there were tons of evidences. However at that moment he never gave up-he prepared the false identity, the money, and all the other small plans after he was out of the prison. Second, the twenty eight years in prison-he never gave up his hope that he can get out of the prison. He tried little night by night with his little rockhammers for twenty seven years straight. He was never institutionalized by the ‘four walls’: Shawshank was not his world. Third, when breaking the prison: he was hopeful on the way out-he hoped he could take care of the rats and creatures in the sewer, he hoped he was going to the right place, he hoped he could find the adequate place to get his clothes, he hoped the place he hid his key was the same as twenty eight years before, he hoped the rock was not taken by anyone else, he hoped his key was right there, he hoped his false identity works out. Every step required him hope, and he was qualified. He had his hope of going to Zihuatanejo: a name too pretty to forget for both Andy and Red because it was the place of hope.
The book illustrates couple of more ideas: such as, the social hierarchy. Andy, who was comparatively in a high social status than anyone else in the prison because he was smart, educated, and rich, turned out to be the one who accomplished his dream and who was the ‘legend’ of the Shawshank. Guys like Red or other uneducated ones can not think smart like Andy did and even though they did, they did not have money or friend like Jim who can prepare them a false identity. They did not have the knowledge Andy had about money and thus they did not have the power. However, Andy did, and that is one of the big reasons he could succeed. The prisoners prepared for high school equivalency tests: it shows how Stephen King thinks the social hierarchy- which determined on how much the person is educated or rich- is important in this society.
Andy said: “Because guys like us, Red, we know there’s a third choice. An alternative to staying simon-pure or bathing in the filth and the slime. It’s the alternative that grown-ups all over the world pick. You balance off your walk through the hog wallow against what it gains you. You choose the lesser of two evils and try to keep your good intentions in front of you. And I guess you judge how well you’re doing by how well you sleep at night… and what your dreams are like. (p.53~54)” He also said: “what I’m doing in here isn’t all that different from what I was doing outside.” “But I don’t push the pills. I don’t bring them in, and I don’t sell them once they are in. Mostly it’s the screws who do that. (p.53)”
This is the other issue made: morality. Besides what Andy said, this is my opinion: there is no such thing as a third alternative. Andy did help the pills to be sold, and Andy is indeed a part of the crime. He can never justify himself with the ‘good intention.’ It is a similar problem with, back at the people who worked for Nazis. The ones who pushed the Jews into the trains and camps claimed that they were innocent because they did not intend to kill them, and they just did what they were required to. However they were criminals: they knew the Jews were going to die. Andy knew the money he was washing came from selling pills, but he said nothing. For his case he would not lose his status completely even he refused to take care of those money because money needed to be tax-cared were already plenty. Immoral, what he did, and can never be justified. In contrast, Red was moral: he did not accept requests of dangerous things such as getting the ‘guys who’ll use a knife.’ He did not get them because he knew those will be used to harm-or even kill-someone. Good intentions mean one wants good results, and when Andy knew the results will be pills, his ‘good intention’ was not really good.
Nevertheless, Andy was a pretty successful character: he had prepared for the ‘hurricane’ and hoped what he had prepared will successfully protect his pictures, and it did. Hope, high social hierarchy with money and education, and most importantly, his will to get over the huge obstacle that seemed to be his unchangeable destiny, allowed him to break out the prison and finally achieve his dream. That made Andy to be happy Peter Stevens in a small hotel of Zihuatanejo, and none of that-especially the strong will of gaining freedom and living his own life-made Brooks dead in a ‘home for indigent old folks up Freeport way in 1953.’ Brooks should have never liked the ‘shithouse.’
