Shawshank Redemption Movie Analysis

The movie Shawshank Redemption is based on the Shawshank prison, and depicts the emotions and behaviors demonstrated when being stuck in a prison for a life sentence. Red, Eilis Boyd is the narrator of the film, and he exclaims that “life in prison takes your life,” and that when the “bars slam that’s how you know it’s the end of the road.” The prisoners are shamed for crying their first night locked up. One prisoner was even beaten by a prison guard for crying his first night locked. Being in Shawshank prison for a life sentence slowly dehumanized them to the point that they could not think of a life outside of the prison. 

According to Chapter 2, emotionally salient information is more likely to be remembered. Younger adults tend to remember more negative information than positive. Through the amygdala interacting with the hippocampus, the prisoners have everlasting memories of being locked up. This is seen through Brooks. Brooks has been in prison for the fifty years of his life. For Brooks, it has become that the only memories that he has were in Shawshank. Brooks was fearful of the outside world and could not picture a life outside of prison. He had felt that Shawshank was where he belonged forever. Through only having negative memories of being in prison, Brooks tried to kill Heywood by putting a knife to his throat. He felt that Shawshank was the only spot that he will ever fit in. By trying to hurt Heywood he had hoped that, he would be able to stay in Shawshank and not have to leave and face the real world. However, after leaving Shawshank he started having bad dreams and lived in fear. Emotionally salient information became cemented in Brooks brain to the point where he was tired of living in fear and being afraid, resulting in him hanging himself. Being in prison for a majority of one's life has resulted in everlasting negative memories that have haunt Brooks and other prisoners for a lifetime. Furthermore, the average longevity of life is 78.5 years (Chapter 4). This means that for most of the prisoners they will spend their full longevity in prison and never return to their normal lives outside of prison if they even knew how to do so. The Warden of Shawshank put Andy, who was in Shawshank for being wrongly accused of killing his wife and his wife's lover, into solitude for two months for trying to prove his innocence. Being in solitude alone in your own thoughts for two months must have felt like decades for him, and ideally took years off his longevity. Andy spent most of his 19 years in Shawshank trying to find a way out so that he could live a normal life outside of Shawshank and make riches. For Brooks and Andy their time in Shawshank can be depicted as flashbulb memories. Flashbulb memories are emotional memories that are impossible to forget. After leaving Shawshank for Brooks these reoccurring flashbulb memories was what led him to his death, because he had dreams about still being in prison, and dreams of falling. For Andy, being in solitude he felt worthless and wrongly treated and will have flashbulb memories of how the guards and the warden treated him and the other prisoners.  

As discussed in chapter nine, lifestyle in young adulthood is the best predictor of life satisfaction in old age. The prisoners do not have a good predictor of life satisfaction from facing imprisonment for a lifetime. The prisoners did not get a chance to form a lifestyle in their early adulthood because all they knew was the prison system. Depression amongst the prisoners in Shawshank is the result of long-term high-level stress. This led to depression symptoms in the prisoners. Some depressive symptoms are depressed mood, feeling of worthlessness and suicidal ideation. Older adults have been seen to have the highest rates of depression. This was especially true in the prison system. Additionally, older white men have been proven to be more depressed than older black people. Andy tries to relieve the prisoners' depressive moods by breaking into the Wardens office to play soothing Italian opera. To the prisoners, hearing music gave them hope. Andy keeps himself occupied in the prison to relieve his negative emotionality. Andy rebuilds the library for the prisoners and writes countless amounts of letters to get the funds to do so. Before imprisonment, Andy was a banker. Andy becomes the financial consultant for the guards and other prisoners. He helps them with anything from a trust fund to doing their taxes for them. Andy even taught a fellow inmate Tommy to read and write because he was uneducated. It made Andy feel good about himself watching Tommy improve his skills. However, alike the other inmates the prison system easily gets into your head. Andy begun tired of the Wardens treatment toward him and the prison system in general. He figured out an escape plan and ran away from the prison system. During this time, the Warden was scared that the treatment of the prisoners would be leaked, and he was successful in parasuicide. Successful suicide attempts were also seen through Brooks life outside of prison because he felt lost in the outside world. Brooks got out of prison after 50 years, the entire world had changed around him, and he did not know how to go back to living a normal night. Brooks felt worthless, and alone and Brooks began to have all the depressive symptoms until his death. Moreover, when Red finally left Shawshank after 40 years he felt lost and lived in fear until he was able to reconnect with his friend Andy. 

Being in a prison for a lifetime it was not a surprise to see the prisoners having depressive symptoms. Being in prison for a life sentence could really take a toll on one's mental health. The friendships that were made in Shawshank, specifically Red and Andy, were what kept them going and not letting the prison system get to them, because they knew that they had each other. Creating friendship while in prison was demonstrated to be a particularly important aspect of relieving depressive symptoms because it was crucial to realize that they were not alone in their experiences.  

Prison is a lifeless world. Through being in Shawshank for a life sentence, it was demonstrated to affect emotional processing in the brain and lead to depression. The depressive mentality and the emotions that the characters portrayed were so real that it was easy to feel compassion and feel bad for them. Hope was a key feature that the prisoners tried to always must relieve their depressive moods. If the prisoners gave up hope they felt that it was also giving up on their lives outside of prison.