Andy Dufresne8217s Search for a Perfect World in the Shawshank Redemption :: essays papers

Andy Dufresne8217s Search for a Perfect World in the Shawshank Redemption ï » ¿Andy Dufresne's Search For A Perfect World Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) is a wrongly convicted lawyer, serving time in the hell known as Shawshank Prison for the murder of his adulterous wife. Andy’s life in prison starts off miserably. He finds maggots in his food, is regularly raped by â€Å"the Sisters†, a group of prisoners who beat an rape other prisoners, and is threatened an harassed by the prison’s guards. However, as time goes on, Andy slowly turns the hell he lives in into a livable, if not perfect world. He files the guards’ tax returns, so that he saves the guards money in ways they could never have found. In return, the guards protect him for the sisters. He even helps the warden of Shawshank to launder money. (The warden receives bribes in exchange for the free prison labor he offers to farmers and businesses around the state.) Andy also befriends the prison’s one man black market, a man known as Red (Morgan Freeman), and is able to purchase a few luxuries. Through Red, Andy buys a rock hammer, which he uses to carve a chess set, and posters of the decades’ most beautiful women (as time goes on, Rita Hayworth is replaced by Marilyn Monroe. Andy, though, still has dreams of a truly perfect world, one without walls or cells, where he can be truly free. This causes Andy to work every night at digging tunnel out of the prison and into the outside world. Before Andy escapes, he tells Red about a place to go to, if he should ever get out of prison. Then one night he escapes. He then empties every account he built up while working for the warden. After which he exposes the money laundering scheme going on inside the prison. Finally Red gets parole, and he joins Andy on a sunny beach in Mexico. Andy has found his Utopia, a place where he has a friend, and no restrictions. Tim Robbins does an excellent job of portraying a man stuck amongst rapists, murderers, and thieves. Robbins shows just the right amount of unbeaten hope, combined with a certain distant, aloof look at times, put together these show that he, unlike the rest of the prisoners, has an internal fire, separating him from the rest of the inmates.