At the suggestion of one of my high school friends, this week my passion blog movie was “Shawshank Redemption.” All I knew about this movie prior to watching it was that it had something to do with a prison, so I didn’t really know what to expect. I definitely didn’t expect that I would actually enjoy and learn something from a movie about a prison.

If I had to pick my favorite scene from this movie, I think it would have to be when the inmates were building the library. I love books and the library, so I was very excited when they finally started to have a variety of updated books. Andy’s dedication to his letter-writing in order to convince the government to put money aside for a prison library was amazing. I never really thought about books in prison before, but after watching this movie it does seem important. If, as Red’s regular conversations with the warden and guards point out, rehabilitation is an important part of the prison experience, then it is important that the inmates have an opportunity to learn something about life and other ways of living. How can they possibly come to understand a ‘rehabilitated’ lifestyle if the only thing they know is how to be institutionalized and surrounded by other men who also do not know rehabilitated lifestyles? It seems impossible for that to work. However, the power of books is amazing, and they allow people to experience different lives and environments, as well as to better examine aspects of what it means to be human and a member of society. I imagine that Andy’s letters talked about these ideas and more (considering how many hundreds of letters he wrote). It was great to see so many of the inmates learning about the books in the library and coming to enjoy it.

Of course though, I loved the ending of this movie. In a way, I was glad that Red didn’t get his parole until the ending. He finally had a real, thought out answer to whether or not he felt rehabilitated, and it was clear that he had learned that answer through his experiences with Andy and with help from Andy’s outlook towards prison and life. I have to admit, I was kind of confused at first about the ‘gift’ Andy left for Red. Like Red and I’m sure most of the other viewers, I assumed that the gift under the tree had been something that Andy hid back before he went to Shawshank and knew that he would never get to have again because he was going to commit suicide. When that obviously didn’t happen, though, I was very confused about what Red might find under the tree. I guess it had all been part of Andy’s big, elaborate plan of escape: he even planned a perfect way for his friend to join him.

I would definitely recommend this movie to a friend. It was slightly longer than some others I have watched for this blog, at nearly 2.5 hours, but it was never boring (which I appreciated).