I had to watch the film 3-4 times to get into the minds of all the characters, especially Andy Dufresne. He makes us understand the importance of certain things in life, like patience and the will to face anything that comes across our lives.
The other inmates assume Andy to be a cry baby when he first enters the pathway of that massive prison. Hardly they knew at the time that certain players are hard to crack. Andy is never seen expressing the slightest of emotional overdrive over anything; at least till the end of the film. Even at the end it was expressed in a very subtle manner. We certainly would have seen at least one person like that in our lifetime (or just wait, you’ll see one pretty soon). Andy knows he is in there for no reason at all, guilty of a crime that he never committed. He’s deeply hurt when he come to know the truth about his wife. It hurts him more than the prison life. But he accepts the fact that sometimes everything, even fate goes against us.
But then it would be severe injustice if 40 valuable years of his life would go a waste in one of the worst places in the planet. So what does he do? He decides the very first week that one day or another he will get out of the prison and that day will not be the last day of his life-time sentence. The escape – usually very easy in the movies – takes him a considerable time to achieve. But the point is … he does it.
If we cannot find a proper place to live, make the place where we live into a proper one. It has two advantages, one is that we’ll always be occupied with something – “In a jail a man would do almost anything that would keep him occupied“. The second advantage is that you will always be in the good books of the officials. Andy had a simple, basic plan to get out of the prison. But before he could do that his character gets him closer to many inmates and officials and he decides to help them all out. Even the corrupt officials end up seeking help from this noble genius.
He had no intentions of seeking revenge on anybody but he is forced to; when someone denies him an opportunity to prove his innocence, even if it is after 19 years of his sentence. It is very painful to accuse someone of something and it is even more painful if that someone is denied a chance to prove his innocence. Andy decides that’s enough …. and pulls the dictator down to hell as he makes his escape to freedom.
20 years it took Andy Dufresne to escape the prison, but he wasted little time in the prison. He accomplished things that no one else had done, simple yet greatly satisfying things and every bit of those were eminent in his face when he stood outside the prison walls, hands spread apart enjoying every single drop of rain touching his face. He had turned the horrible prison life into a more meaningful one and all the time he just had one thing in mind … self esteem … redemption!
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