The Hope in “The Shawshank Redemption”

Hope is an important quality in our life because it is a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen, hope is not just a feel-good emotion, but a dynamic cognitive motivational system. Hope allows people to approach any obstacle that may come on their way on achieving what they desire or what they want in life with a mindset and strategy set suitable to success, that leads to their learning goals, which is conducive to growth and improvement.

In Frank Darabont’s movie film, “The Shawshank Redemption”, Andy Dufresne, a man who got charge of murdering and put behind bars in crime he didn’t do, struggles on how he will prove that he is innocent in a world full of prejudice. We all know that we all experience hoping into something that we want to happen or to get and at the same time we once lose hope that we can do better in our lives because of the problems that we think we can’t solve, just like Brook he lose hope that he can be a better person because he feels that no one even cared for him while other people like Red, at first he doesn’t care if he will be able to get out in that prison and don’t have a goal in life until he met a guy named Andy, a guy full of hope, a guy who can do everything and a guy who doesn’t give up easily to get his freedom.

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Everything we do can result in any consequences it’s either bad or good. In the movie Shawshank, Brook, a man who lives his fifty years of existence in a prison, a man full of doubt about himself and doesn’t have enough confidence to go out and explore new things to a real world but instead of exploring he lose hope and end his life because he could not take the realistic and how cruel the world outside the prison. When he set Jake and said, “you can go now, you’re free,” it seems that he is actually talking to himself, he already has the freedom to go out and face the reality outside the walls of Shawshank. However he kept himself in the darkness feeling trapped and hopeless, he found himself lost in an open world. When he left the prison we can see in fear in his eyes, the fear of going out in a world full of judgment, a fear of being alone. He realized that he did not belong to that kind of environment and that he only belongs in the jail where he lost the sense of living.

Losing hope is simply the opposite, if we lose hope we experience a lot of negative emotion, just like what happened to the two characters in the movie Shawshank, Brook and the warden Norton, they end their lives because they’re afraid to have another chance to be a better person and to improve themselves. Hopelessness is one of the lowest emotions we can experience when we are moved powerfully by a deep desire for something and it does not materialize, it is understandable that filling that emptiness we fill would take time. However, hope can always be nurtured back into our lives, in order to get back our confidence we need to create an objective that we can progress towards, it doesn’t have to be a big ambition, it can be simple just for us to have to be motivated. If you made a mistake, you do not have to give up and do not lose hope because every person in this world deserved a second chance to improve their lives and to be a better person.

Another character had the absence of hope in the Shawshank is Red. He was introduced as a well-known man, a man that could get you ‘stuff’ from the outside world. He forces the other men to do business on his terms and knows full well the need to defend his own interests in a world where violence and exploitation are the norms. However, Red’s hardened stance conceals his fear and insecurities as he struggles to make sense of his life both in and out of the prison. Red also lack the confidence of getting out in his comfort zone just like Brook, the only difference is Red was able to overcome his fear. When Red says, “Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane”. With this loss of hope, Red lost his spiritual hold because he thinks he cannot live the future, his life in the prison was provisional until he met Andy, he was able to feel what free feels like and he at least became more optimistic, it is Andy’s resolute sense of hope that Red admires about him, Red knows that hope is what keeps him and every other inmate alive. Hopeful people can face the most negative times with a positive attitude and because of the many benefits of optimism, it significant the improvement in each person. Yes, ‘Hope is a dangerous thing,” but not because it can make people crazy. It is a dangerous thing because it gives people the tenacity to ‘keep on going’ and never give up, it gives people the power to change their perspective in this world that would be the ‘best of things’.

Andy Dufresne, who used to be a successful banker until he was accused of killing his wife and her lover. Andy, the man who can talk down the guards; Andy, the man who can manipulate the warden; and Andy, the man who can escape out from under everyone’s noses. He never loses hope that he can be able to prove that he is innocent and get his freedom, even though he was physically assaulted and emotionally abused by the guards and the warden, he endured all of it and never gave up. Rather than being dragged to the bitter reality, the prison had given him, Andy chose to maintain his sense of self-worth and create goals in the hope that he can break out of imprisonment. “Remember hope is a good thing, Red, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies”. This quote essentially prove that Andy never gives up hope, he came into the prison with redemption in his mind and left accomplishing his goal, his hope is what led him to his freedom and what he became.

Hope is an essential aspect of our lives because it creates courage in every individual whenever they are faced with a difficult situation, people with hope have the will to achieve their ambitions. Without hope, we wouldn’t strive to be a better person and to do better. Hope creates a positive attitude in an individual, hence making it easy for them to achieve their goals. In “The Shawshank Redemption”, a movie film by Frank Darabont, a man full of hope and never gives up, Andy Dufresne struggles in finding his freedom in the face of isolation. Hope is the ability to see the possible good things in the future. People with mastery goals act helpless and feel a lack of control over their environment. They do not believe in their capacity to obtain the kind of future they want, always remember that losing hope can lead to isolation.

Updated: Apr 13, 2021
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The Hope in “The Shawshank Redemption”. (2020, Sep 05). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/the-hope-in-the-shawshank-redemption-essay

The Hope in “The Shawshank Redemption” essay
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