Human consciousness is an interesting example. From it stimulates imagination, curiosity and all the other elements that make us human. Influences from the outside world influence how one might perceive an action. They can even influence us and push us away from the direction our moral compass is pointing us. The ropes of oppression can strangle anyone's soul, but through the means of human connections, a sense of self, and a glimpse of freedom, Cool Hand Luke's Lucas Jackson and The Shawshank Redemption's Andy Dufresne overcome the rift where they are forced. hear from their situations. They escape the noose before it has a chance to take over and dictate their lives in their entirety. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayLucas Jackson from Cool Hand Luke is not the stereotypical prisoner type. Arrested for ripping his head off parking meters with a crowbar while drunk, he stands out from the rest of the criminals in Florida's traffic prison. He quickly earns the respect of the prisoners, not by being ferocious or macho, but rather by being charming and quirky. Dragline, resident leader of the prison mob, takes an interest in Luke from the start. His quick mouth and quiet resignation earn him the attention of Dragline and the rest of the group, and his determination on the first day on the job makes him stand out. As the group grows fond of Luke, he battles Dragline on Sunday, the day they rest from the week's hard work on the road. As Luke takes blow after blow, he continues to get up. Dragline ends up begging Luke to stop, along with the rest of the chain gang, but continues to fight until he is wounded and bloodied beyond recognition. This resistance earns him incredible respect and admiration, even from the guards and the warden. He earns the nickname "Cool Hand Luke" after tricking another inmate into losing a card game he could have easily won. Luke's nickname Cool Hand sticks with him throughout the film due to his cold reactions to everything thrown at him. He is informed that his mother has died and the warden puts him in the "box", a small barrack designed to isolate and scare the prisoners, to prevent them from escaping. However, Luke's time in the pits doesn't stop him from being determined. He attempts to escape three separate times. After the second attempt, the guards try to take away his resistance. He eventually loses it, convincing both guards and prisoners that he is broken, because he really is. On his third attempt to escape, he is shot and killed by his least favorite guard. Until the end, Luke remains calm. In The Shawshank Redemption, a Maine banker is tried and convicted of the murder of his wife and her lover. Andy Dufresne, a generally callous man with a cold demeanor, is sent to the infamous Shawshank Prison with two life sentences to serve. The current prisoners bet on who will be the first to give in, and Andy is chosen by Red, the smuggler and leader of the prison team. Despite this, Red takes a liking to Andy as soon as he meets him. Andy asks Red for a rock hammer, claiming it was one of his hobbies, and Red easily smuggles it to him. Andy calmly endures the first two years of prison. However, he received negative attention from those who worked with him in the laundry and was beaten and raped regularly. Red uses his influence to remove Andy from that situation, getting him a jobon the roof. There Andy meets a guard and begins to use his education as leverage for better treatment. He ends up spending most of his time in the library, where he sets up a financial advice desk, helping the guards with their financial needs. He helps them hide money from the IRS, earning their trust. He works on expanding the library by writing letters to the State Senate to receive funds, which are eventually responded to with $200. Andy is also sent phonograph records from the state Senate, which he manages to play through the speaker system of the prison, causing an uproar. His defiance earned him a beating and a stint in the "hole," a nickname for the solitary confinement cell. Andy is told by another inmate that in a former prison he was cellmates with an inmate who talked about killing a woman and her lover, all while her banker husband went to prison for it and took the blame. guilt. Andy, finally hopeful, goes to the director with this information. Andy tells the warden that he would never talk about the hidden money or any of the financial favors he has done, and the warden is outraged that he even brought it up. The director fires an affected Andy, who is thrown into solitary confinement. The warden then finds the inmate who gave Andy the information and has him killed. Andy and Red continue to grow throughout the film. Red fears that Andy will kill himself and during one of their conversations in the prison yard, Andy reveals his hopes to Red. His dream place is Zihuatanejo, Mexico. He tells Red that in a huge field in Buxton, Maine, there is a wall of rocks next to a tree. Under one of those rocks, one that doesn't belong to him, there is something for him. When Red leaves, Andy wants him to go get him. As Andy's anger is fueled, so too does his hope for life on the outside. On a stormy night, Andy removes a poster from the wall, hiding a man-sized tunnel he had dug with Red's rock hammer. He hits a sewer line in time with the lightning, a perfect combination to burst the pipe. He escapes across a stream and is never found. Red eventually reaches parole time and leaves the prison system. He finds the gift, the money, and Andy's directions on where to find it, and breaks his parole to get to Zihuatanejo, Mexico, where he and Andy are finally reunited. Throughout the film, Andy places his hope in escape and ultimately in his future beyond prison walls, something many prisoners struggle to realize. From a young age, we are taught that sharing with others is the best way to alleviate anything that may ail us. Sharing difficulties with others helps us recognize that we are never truly alone. Both Luke and Andy see this as an advantage in the prison system. Doris Lessing describes the group mentality that comes from being part of a certain group of people: “Very few people are actually happy on their own, and they tend to be seen by their neighbors as peculiar or selfish or worse. [but] Most people can't stand being alone for long” (Lessing 307). Lessing touches on the idea that people need other people to thrive. This is especially true in a prison environment, where it seems like the prisoners are against the guards. In Andy's case, he was a new idol for the residents of Shawshank. He looked as stoic as ever when meeting his new companions, but they admired him because he didn't seem fazed by their intimidation techniques. On his first night in prison, the other inmates attempted to make the new men buckle under the isolation and pressure. Red already hadbet that Andy would make it through prime time, but in the end he persevered and never made any noise. Luke made a different appeal. On his first day with the Chain Gang, he washes his hands during common time and the resident leader, Dragline, mocks him. Luke responds with nothing more than a small smirk and a cheeky response. However, she won the boys over with nothing more than a little charisma and charm. Staying true to your core values ​​throughout your life can be difficult for the average person, but what about those who are surrounded by criminals twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week? Remembering oneself is difficult in any society, but it is exponentially harder to maintain an identity while spending time in an institution designed to degrade and dehumanize its inhabitants. THE prison system crushes any sense of individuality, but these two characters managed to stay true to themselves during their sentence. Andy finds his truth in playing music over the prison's speaker system. As Andy continued his sentence, we knew he was on good terms with the prison staff. One afternoon he locked a guard in the bathroom and managed to play a record through a gramophone and play it throughout the prison. After doing so, he was placed in solitary confinement for two weeks, one of the longest periods he had ever spent there. When he returned, he impressed his classmates by saying that “it was the easiest he had ever had” (TSR). Luke takes energy and feeds off of his friends seemingly as much as they feed off of him. However, he becomes angry with them after his second capture. Unfortunately, it takes a while to recover. “Stop feeding on me!” he shouted angrily, after being beaten and threatened by the menacing guards. This was the beginning of the end for Luke's courage and strength. This alienated some of the prisoners because they began to see Luke's weakness, which was not something he was eager to reveal to them at first. The dehumanization eventually got to Luke, triggering a backlash. Instead of responding negatively, Andy began planning his escape. Psychologists Herbert C. Kelman and V. Lee Hamilton describe the process of dehumanization and the struggle to remain human in their essay on the My Lai massacre. The prisoners are simply "bodies to be counted and inserted into their reports, as faceless figures..." (Kelman 142). In this way the prisoners are reduced to nothing more than numbers. There is a constant struggle to maintain the essence of humanity in its simplest form. Andy finds it through music. Luke finds it by keeping his joy to himself. Sometimes it's in the smallest things that humans tend to find the most pleasure. It is also commonly recognized that taking something away only increases the desire for the object. When inmates are new to facilities, who have just had their freedom taken away, this can seem like a big deal. It should very well. It also provides a stronghold in which to escape from the harsh realities of the prison scene. Andy maintains his sense of sanity and wits as he plots his escape after years and years of work. His idea of ​​freedom still has unexpressed potential, an idea still untouched by institutionalization. When the warden discovers that Andy is missing, the narration says, "He was gone before they even knew he was planning to run away" (TSR). Luke's escape, however, is much more desperate. He tries to escape several times, but his plans are not developed. He never looks beyond the initial escape. Although his escapes are successful enough to escape from prison, he never knows what to do as soon as he gets out, ending up being.