Shawshank Redemption And Allegory Of The Cave Comparison

Locked Up Being a prisoner in the early to mid-1900s would not be considered an enjoyable time. Prisoners were allowed to be beaten and killed by guards, thus keeping them in check. Inmates can be sent to “the hole” for a month or more while others can actually see the light of day. It is not an easy task to be a prisoner, especially if one lives in fear of being beaten or raped each day. The fear just described is the fear Andy Dufresne, a man who has been convicted of murdering his wife and her lover, lived with through the beginning of his sentence before becoming friends with Red and some of the guards. The film The Shawshank Redemption and the novella “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption” portray the effects of prison life including the rising and the falling of certain prisoners, along with the friendships and connections made. Along with the film and the novella, “Paul’s Case” by Willa Cather and “Allegory of the Cave” by Plato share similarities with King’s novella. Each prison has its leaders and its followers, but Red seems to be one of its leaders, soon to follow—Andy Dufresne. In the beginning of the film, the new prisoners are being brought in by a small bus while the inmates yell and cause a ruckus in the yard awaiting their arrival. As they all get off the bus, the inmates make bets as to which
It keeps people hidden away from society to be changed for better or worse. What really matters is the hierarchy of prisoners and the friends an inmate chooses to make. In the novella and the film, these two categories seem to prove its importance. Bogs was put in his place while Andy rose to the top along with his friends. Shawshank is a cave keeping inmates away from seeing the real world and what has become of it. Without the knowledge about the rest of society, inmates cannot adjust to the new discoveries in technology. Life in prison is not stress-free and plenty of these inmates learned the hard