Shawshank

Shawshank

The movie, Shawshank Redemption, is about a story of two men, Andy Dufrane and Red Abbott, who spent most of their lives in a prison together going through the ups and downs of prison life. Andy, who was once a vice-president at a bank, was in prison for murdering his wife and her lover, when he caught them in bed together; he was giving life in prison. Whereas Red, also a convicted murderer, got life but with a chance of parole. The two grew close to each other because they were both very educated men and had the same interests. After five years of doing the laundry, the warden thought it would in the prisons best interest to use such an educated man as Andy in the library. So they transferred Andy from the laundry to the library to assist the librarian, Brook Hadlen. After being Brook’s assistant for a while Brook’s got paroled and Andy took over the library job as well as did taxes for all the guards and the warden. There was not much to the library so Andy asked the warden if it would be all right if the started sending a letter and week to the Senate to get funds, and the warden agreed. He sent a letter a week until, finally, six years later he got a response. He went down to the warden’s office and he saw stacks of old books, magazines, and records sent from libraries that did not use them anymore and also a check in the amount of two hundred dollars to go toward the building of a new library.

Andy was overjoyed with all of these things and begins to look through all the different records and such. He finds a record that he likes and gets the nerve to play it on the record player. The music is an opera style piece and once the music begins you can see and feel the joy it brings to Andy. An officer from the restroom asks Andy if he could also hear that but Andy just ignores him and uses the key to lock the restroom and then proceeds to lock the warden’s office so he would not disappear. So as the music continues, Andy decides that he should not be the only one to enjoy the music but to allow everyone to hear it. He then goes over to the switchboard and turns it on for all to hear. As the music goes through the speakers all the prisoners and guards turn in awe toward the speaker and just listen. Two Italian ladies were singing the beautiful Italian opera music and their voices soared that one could hear from the heavens. It ga...

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... warden would not of allowed it.

The whole point to this scene is communicating to the audience how much of affect music has on people and what it communicates. Music one of the major forms of communications, it changes people’s attitudes because it touches souls before anything else. Music helps people through the good and the bad times of their lives. Andy realizes that there is more out there than just prison, “there are places in the world that aren’t made out of stone, there is something inside that they can’t get to, that they get touch.” What Andy is talking about is hope. Hope is what keeps everyone alive and going day after day. Hope can bring the most happiness to one’s life. That is what the prisoner’s were thinking of when they heard the music in the courtyard. It was not two Italian opera singers, it was the voice of reason reminding them that everything will be alright and good will come to all. None of the inmates knew what the Italian singers were singing about but they listened because it touched all of them. If positive music, such as the opera singers, were more integrated into everyday lives people would change and become better human beings because of it.