me that all of Shawshank was corrupt in its ways. In prison there are different levels of confinement and this was shown to play a big part in the prisoners life at Shawshank. If you were caught in the act of doing something against the rules or in Andy’s case, standing up to the warden, you were sent to solitarily confinement for a period of time. In the movie Andy spent two months in solitary with only bread and water to survive. This to me is a hell of a way to get what you want out of the inmates but some have nothing to lose so even solitary does not break them. One of the subjects that the film deals with is the idea of “institutionalization.” The idea that inmates that have spent so many years behind bars that they can no longer function in a free society. I can only imagine how difficult it would be to one day have to get yourself up out of bed, make yourself some food, and go to work in a society that has passed you by. After forty or fifty years of inmate life you become depended on the prison it becomes your world, your security. The example of this in the movie is Brooks, the old librarian who is paroled after forty plus years in Shawshank. In the letter he sends to his friends back at Shawshank he talks about how different society is from when he was last a free man. Brooks talks about the automobile, and how he had only seen them before in books and how fast passed the world is from how he used to remember it. This is the idea of “institutionalization.” I have seen The Shawshank Redemption countless times, and every time I see it I find something else or see something in a different way. Only a great movie can keep you coming back again and again, and keep you so interested that you watch it whenever its on television, and this movie just happened to be about the lives of prisoners and the hope to one day be free....
