Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption

Corruption of justice in the prison system is relevant in Stephen Kings, novella, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. The Cause of this corruption was the greed of the administrators, and the lasting effects it had on the prisoners mentally, physically, and emotionally.

Many of the prisoners were affected mentally by the administration of Shawshank; the key players included Warden Samuel Norton. Norton embodies the contradictory corruption of Shawshank. He justifies his manipulation in the name of faith, and the bible. “The people who run this place are stupid, brutal monsters for the most part. The people who run the straight world are brutal and monstrous, but they happen not to be quite as stupid, because the standard of competence out there is a little higher. Not much, but a little” (53) this quote indicates that the prisoners see the administrators as monsters rather than human this could be caused by infliction of psychological pain. Brooks Hatlen is an example of how the prison system handicapped him mentally into being reliant on the prison system. “What lay beyond its walls was as terrible to Brooks as the western seas had been to superstitious fifteenth century sailors. He was the librarian, an educated man. If he went to the Kittery library and asked for a job they wouldn’t even give him a library card. I heard he died in a home for indignant old folks up Freeport way in 1953, and that he lasted about six months longer than I thought he would. Yea I guess the state got its own back on Brooksie, all right. They trained him to like it inside the shit house and then they threw him out.” (49) Brooks had been at Shawshank since his late twenties. He left at the ripe old age of Sixty-Eight. Shawshank had become his hom...

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...tional trauma. When prisoner were sent to Shawshank to be rehabilitated, they came back corrupt and reliant on the system.

Shawshank was far from being a rehabilitative place it only ever managed to drag prisoners down a deeper darker hole, then the one they had gotten themselves into it the first place. People like Andy who had come to Shawshank innocent turned to illegal activities in order to stay alive and not lose their minds. Corruption of justice is still relevant in today’s society whether in court, at school, or even in your own houses. At Shawshank the cause of this corruption was the greed of the prison authorities, and the extortion and abuse they put the prisoners through physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Works Cited

King, Stephen. Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption: A Story from Different Seasons. Thorndike, Me.: Thorndike, 1982. Print.