Shawshank Redemption

In the movie The Shawshank Redemption based on a novella by Steven King, the movie shows how prison life affects prisoners when they are released from jail. Prisoners can choose to go down two different paths. One path they can take is to live their life, or they can choose to take their life. In the movie there is an important character named Andy. Andy was put in jail for the murder of his wife, which he knows he did not do. He becomes good friends with Red and the Guards like him because he is a banker. Andy is an outspoken prisoner with a lot of common sense. In one part of the movie Andy says, “Get busy living or get busy dying.” This quote plays an important role in the movie because Red and Brooks who are two important characters get out of jail and must make the choice to either “Get busy living or get busy dying.”

When people are in jail for a long period of time, they get used to the simplest things in life. Prisoners get food, have a place to sleep, have clothes to wear, and have books to read. They adapt to the guards always telling them when to wake up or when to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. Prisoners get so used to these things that when they get out of jail, they don’t know what to do with themselves. They have been taken care of for so many years and now they are let out on their own. Prisoners are used to a small world and then they have to go live in a big world. Most of the time this is scary for prisoners they may be excited to get out and also scared. They have no money to live on, no place to live, nor a job to get by on. The movie offers two ways of dealing with life after prison; you can either live or die.

Brooks was an older man who had been in jail for many years. When Brooks heard about his release he grabbed another prisoner and took a sharp tool to his neck. He said that he was going to kill him so that he could stay in jail. Andy came to the scene with Red and convinced Brooks to put down the knife because everything was going to be alright. Brooks was then released from Shawshank. Later, on the outside, he is walking down the street and he tries to cross the road but is overwhelmed by too many cars on the road. He says in a letter to his friends that he never remembered so many cars on the road. That scene demonstrates how sheltered he was in side the prison was and that now he is out of jail and doesn’t know how to think. Brooks gets an apartment and a job at the local grocery store. Brooks hands begin to hurt him and he is not moving fast enough for the complaining customers. Brooks goes home one night and can’t sleep because he is afraid. He says there is no use living a life like this. Next he carved “Brooks was here” in the wall and then hung himself. Brooks clearly “got busy dying”, because he could not stand living a life in a world he was not used to. He didn’t know how to deal with people and couldn’t stand to be alone at night. Brooks was a poor old man who couldn’t live his life because he didn’t know how to on the outside of Shawshank Prison.

Red had been in jail for a long time, as well. Red was denied parole several times because he told the parole board what he thought they wanted to hear everytime. One day when he went in a told a different story from the heart and the board approved him. Red talked to Andy before Andy left. Andy told Red that if he left, he should go to this place by a long stone wall under a big oak tree standing alone and find a rock that doesn’t belong there. Red was at first scared to leave Shawshank. When he got out, his parole officer got him the same apartment that Brooks had lived in. Red also contemplated killing himself. “Why am I still living? What do I have to live for?” he thought. Then he thought about what Andy told him about joining him in Mexico by the clear blue water. Red decided that he would get on living his life. Red broke his parole and went down to Mexico where Andy was. Unlike Brooks, Red “got busy living.”

Brooks and Red are two good examples of how prison life can affect prisoners. Brooks choose the “coward” way out and didn’t deal with any of his fears or problems. Red took the “noble” way and dealt with his problems and fears. Like Andy said “You can get busy living or get busy dying.” Prison can be a hard place to leave if you let it get to you. You have to start a whole new life in a constantly changing world when you get out. Prison shelters people away from society, which can sometimes make it harder for someone to live after they have been in prison so long. I think the noble choice is that you “get busy living” and the coward choice is to “get busy dying.”