The Shawshank Redemption, 1994

Feb. 15 2022 | MICHAEL GULIANO

This film, The Shawshank Redemption, released in 1994, takes place at a prison. The movie revolves around Andy Dufresne, played by Tim Robbins, who is convicted of the murder of his wife and her lover. He is sentenced to two life sentences in Shawshank Prison. In prison, he befriends a fellow inmate, Red, played by Morgan Freeman, who has been in Shawshank for 20 years. Red is known as the “man who knows how to get things'' and can get almost anything a prisoner could want from the outside world, therefore, enticing Andy to become closer to him.

Along with these characters is Bob Grunton, who plays Warden Norton, and William Sadler who plays Heywood. Due to his occupational background, Andy finds himself useful in prison to the Warden and the guards. With his skills in accounting, he begins to do their taxes and quickly becomes the teacher's pet. He gets shown favoritism and has an advantage over the other prisoners. However, this arrangement quickly takes a turn when the Warden has Andy do some shady financial dealing in which he has Andy launder the Warden’s money so there is no way that it can be traced back to them. Andy launders everything through a fictional person by the name of Randall Stevens.

As the film progresses, a new inmate by the name of Tommy arrives at the prison. Tommy has information that could potentially clear the name of his new friend. That doesn’t last long because when the Warden hears about it, he has Tommy murdered and puts Andy in solitary for two months and only releases him when he agrees to continue doing the Warden’s dirty work. After about two decades at Shawshank, Andy is a completely different person and distances himself from everyone around him. One morning, he doesn’t come out of his cell for roll call, he escaped.

It is soon discovered that Andy, for almost his entire stay at Shawshank, has been chiseling away at the wall and made a pathway to the sewer pipes to aid his escape. The Warden, being furious, releases the hounds but it is too late, Andy is gone. The whole time that Andy was doing the dirty work for the Warden, he had a plan. After his escape, he cleared out the funds under Randall Stevens, over $300,000 of the Warden’s personal money. He also sent the crooked account books to the newspaper and heads straight to Mexico where he eventually is reunited with Red.

Andy possesses several attributes that Aristotle describes. Andy has both intellectual and moral virtue. Andy displays intellectual virtue when he begins to help the Warden and the guards with their taxes. He is able to do this because of what he has been taught. He went to school, practiced, perfected his craft, and has a job that all prepared him for that moment. Also, he possesses moral virtue. He realized quickly that he would need to survive in the prison. In order to do this, he went with his natural instincts to survive. He became the teacher's pet in order for a security blanket. Lastly, virtue is focused on actions and passions. Andy acted the way he did and behaved as he did because he had strong beliefs. He knew that he was innocent which made him want to survive and, therefore, why he acted how he did and behaved as he behaved.

Additional Resources:

Five Lessons From the Shawshank Redemption

A Study on Moral Values Represented in Shawshank Redemption Movie

Virtue Ethics and Shawshank Redemption - Presentation

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