Shawshank Redemption Extra Credit Paper Justin Palanchi Virginia Commonwealth University Shawshank Redemption Extra Credit Paper The Shawshank Redemption is about an innocent man named Andy Dufresne who is sent to Shawshank State Penitentiary accused of murdering his cheating wife and her lover. While the prison is corrupt by the warden and guards, Andy becomes close with an inmate named Red. Andy eventually escapes the corrupt prison, and notifies the press of the corruption occurring there, resulting in the warden committing suicide. Red is soon after released on parole, and joins Andy in Zihuatanejo, Mexico. The course topic that I will be discussing relating to the movie is Male Inmates/Men in Prison. I learned a …show more content…
This is when inmates adapt to the prison society. This theme is seen especially with Brooks Hatlen. Brooks is a very old inmate that has spent almost his whole life in Shawshank. He has worked in the prison library for decades, but is eventually released on parole. He finds it extremely hard to adjust to life outside of prison, and hangs himself soon after. When the inmates get news of Brooks, Red says, “These walls are funny. First you hate them, then you get used to them. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them. That's institutionalized…They send you here for life, and that's exactly what they take. The part that counts, anyway” (The Shawshank Redemption). Because Brooks was in prison for so long, he became an institutionalized man, and became reliant on the prison. His life was dependent on the prison, and was not able to function in the outside …show more content…
We learned that one form of social control among inmates in prison is an illegal economy called a “sub-rosa”. I would consider the sub-rosa at Shawshank Penitentiary to be cigarettes. They were extremely high in demand, and were given to each other in exchange for some kind of favor. The higher amount of cigarettes an inmate had, the higher amount of influence and power they had. On the other hand, a major concept that was emphasized in class was that prison rape is not as common as most people think. A false assumption is that rape in prison occurs all the time, and a big reason is because movies and television shows often portray this kind of activity often. This is inaccurately portrayed because The Sisters are constantly beating up Andy and raping him. However, The Shawshank Redemption was a movie made in 1994 and takes place in 1947. The Prison Rape Elimination Act was not passed until 2003, and this is the reason why I found it portrayed inaccurately. A couple other concepts that correspond with what I learned in class were random shakedowns (searches) of the cells, disciplinary segregation, and work assignments in prison. The two kinds of work assignments in the movie were jobs inside the institution (kitchen, custodians, and laundry) and community projects (inmates doing work outside of prison