In 1947. A young Portland banker, Andy Dufresne, is convicted of the murder of Linda Dufresne and Glenn Quinti (Linda's lover). Andy is stubborn in maintaining his innocence, but the evidence is overwhelming and he is sentenced to two life sentences in Shawshank Penitentiary. In prison, he becomes friends with an associate prisoner, Red, who has been in Shawshank for 20 years. Red is known as "the man who knows how to get things" and can get anything a prisoner could want from the outside world. Andy approaches Red after a month of captivity asking for a rock hammer to resume his old interest of collecting and shaping rocks. Shawshank is a harsh and difficult environment, with heartless guards, violent outbursts, and regular cases of sexual violence. Andy initially becomes the target of persistent rape by a gang called "The Sisters" and their leader, Bogs. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay To escape this abuse, Andy takes on a week-long job tarring the roof of a nearby factory. While working, he hears the captain of the guard, Byron Hadley, complain about a ridiculous tax on his inheritance, and Andy sees an opening. As a former banker, Andy offers to help Hadley evade taxes and gains the cold-hearted captain's protection. When Bogs and the sisters attack Andy, they beat him so badly that he is placed in the infirmary, but Hadley, recently ingratiated with the former banker, punishes Bogs by beating him severely, so much so that Bogs is transferred to a hospital. hospital outside the prison. When Andy returns from the infirmary, he asks Red for a poster of Rita Hayworth, which Red dutifully purchases and Andy soon hangs on the wall. job position in the prison library, where he can help the guards and himself with their financial interests. There Andy works hard to perfect the library and help educate his associated inmates, writing to the Senate daily asking for more books, until they finally give in and agree to his demands. After Sometime, an elderly inmate, the gentle Brooks, is released from prison into the real world. Even though it seems like freedom is all he ever wanted, the real world doesn't agree with the older man, who finds himself in a halfway house after a 50-year sentence and hangs himself in his room. After establishing a program through which prisoners can begin working on infrastructure outside prison walls, Norton begins receiving bribes from local businesses who fear that prison work will take away opportunities from their industry. Andy hides the money in a bank account under a fake name, helping the director launder money for several years. In 1964, Shawshank welcomes a new inmate, a friendly man named Tommy Wiliams, who becomes friends with Red and Andy. Andy helps Tommy study to read and get a diploma, and it finally comes to light that Tommy knows the person who really killed Andy's wife and her lover. Seeing a path to freedom, Andy informs the director of the trials, hoping for a second trial, but the director wishes to protect his investment and has Tommy killed and Andy placed in solitary confinement for two months. When Andy finally comes out of solitary confinement, he tells Red about his daydreams of freedom, living in Zihuatanejo, a coastal Mexican city. Red says it certainly won't happen, but Andy holds out hope and tells Red that if he ever gets out of Shawshank he should go to a place in Buxton to retrieve a package buried under an oak tree. The next day, Andy doesn't arrive. at roll call, after escaping through a hole that gives countlessyears digging with the rock hammer. He poses as a fake person in whose name all of Norton's money was deposited and takes the money and flees to Mexico. In the process, he also informs the police of Norton's crooked dealings. When the authorities go to arrest the director, he shoots himself. After 40 years, Red finally gets parole and visits the place in Buxton that Andy told him about. He unearths a box full of money and a letter from Andy telling him to come to Zihuatanejo. He does so and the two friends unite. Shawshank Redemption was definitely one of the best movies I've ever seen, and I even had the chance to watch it again in our class thanks to Professor Ryan Duffy. This movie had several morals that made me think a lot throughout the movie. The first major ethical principle that existed in the film was power. Nearly every character has commanded enough power to create consequences considered sinful. The most intense were the guards, who used ruthless force on the prisoners without sympathy. This is immoral because some prisoners may not even have been guilty, but wrongly convicted and punished for no reason. However, since we cannot identify it for sure, as an audience and from the way the film showed the cruelty of the guard, we feel sympathy for the prisoners who are beaten and tortured and trust that it is a truly immoral way of dealing with the authority . They abuse their power to gain the prisoner's respect, but instead get the opposite. Another character connected to this was Norton, the director, who assumed that his words ruled Shawshank Prison. He viewed prisoners as people with no purpose in the world or worth, and therefore tortured them without thinking about their personal lives, another moral issue. One example of the ruthlessness that truly stunned me was the death of the new prisoner, who declared his feelings of innocence and was immediately murdered by the guards. I felt like I was criticizing the defeat of a voice, or an opinion, because none of the prisoners could show any kind of pain or discomfort without being tortured. Another way power was used the wrong way was the Inside Out program, which clearly promoted slavery. I thought it was interesting to see the prisoners wanting to work for the program, while from an outside perspective I saw everything as forced labor and corrupt use of their power. Norton basically made them work for money, without any benevolence towards the inmates. This is deeply exploitative as he used the diligent work and discipline of others as a method to help himself and obtain all the resources. It also conflicted with his religious standards, as he held so tightly to the Bible and yet did things that the Bible would completely reject. An example of how it conflicts with the Bible is where he kills Thomas, the new prisoner, because he knew the reality and for no other explanation. In any case, despite the fact that the above portrayals led me to identify with Dufresne and Red more than with the guards and Norton, the two of them also did things that conflicted with good standards. Dufresne, while attempting to blaze trails in an opposite direction from prison, began working in the prison's money office and using it totally promoting its potential benefit. He made up false records and changed guidelines within the prison's moral code. At that point he used recognizable false evidence towards the conclusion to get things done and pulverize the life of Norton, who was then observed as the culprit. In every.