In 1947. A young Portland banker, Andy Dufresne, is convicted of the murder of Linda Dufresne and Glenn Quinti (Linda's lover). Andy stubbornly maintains his innocence, but the evidence is overwhelming and he is sentenced to two life terms in Shawshank Penitentiary. In prison, he befriends a fellow prisoner, Red, who has been at 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 imprisonment to ask for a rock hammer to resume his former interest in collecting and shaping rocks. Shawshank is a harsh and difficult environment, with heartless guards, vicious outbursts, and regular instances of sexual assault. Early on, Andy becomes the target of persistent rape at the hands of a gang called "The Sisters" and their leader, Bogs. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not 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 overhears the captain of the guards, Byron Hadley, complaining about a ridiculous tax on his inheritance, and Andy sees this as an opening. As a former banker, Andy offers to help Hadley avoid taxes and gains some protection from the cold-hearted captain. When Bogs and the sisters then attack Andy, they beat him so badly that he is put in the infirmary, but Hadley, recently attracted to the former banker, punishes Bogs by beating him badly, so much so that Bogs is transferred to a hospital outside the prison. When Andy returns from the infirmary, he asks Red for a poster of Rita Hayworth, which Red devotedly acquires and which Andy soon hangs on his wall. As Andy's economic knowledge becomes more widely recognized, the warden, Norton, negotiates with Andy for a position working in the prison library, where he can assist the guards and himself with their financial interests. There, Andy takes care to refine the library and help educate his associated inmates, writing to the Senate daily to demand more books, until they finally surrender and agree to his demands. After some time, an elderly inmate, the gentle Brooks, is released from prison and joins the real world. While it seems freedom is all he ever dreamed of, the real world disagrees with the older man, who ends up in a halfway house after 50 years in prison and hangs himself in his room. After Norton sets up a program through which prisoners can begin working on infrastructure outside the prison walls, he begins receiving bribes from local businesses who fear that prison labor does not take away opportunities from their industry. Andy hides the money in a bank account under a false name, helping the manager launder money for several years. In 1964, Shawshank welcomes a new inmate, a pleasant man named Tommy Wiliams, who becomes friends with Red and Andy. Andy helps Tommy study, read, and get a degree, and it finally emerges 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 evidence, hoping for a second trial, but the Director wishes to protect his investment and has Tommy killed and Andy put in solitary confinement for two months. When Andy finally emerges from solitary confinement, he tells Red about his dreams of freedom: living in Zihuatanejo, a Mexican coastal town. Red says that definitely wouldn't happen, but Andy remains hopeful and tells Red that if heleaves Shawshank, he should go to a place in Buxton to retrieve a package buried under an oak tree. The next day, Andy's doesn't come. to the call, after having escaped through a hole he has been digging with the hammer for countless years. He poses as the fake person in whose name all of Norton's money was deposited, takes the money and flees to Mexico. In doing so, he also reported Norton's dishonest business dealings to the police. When the authorities go to arrest the director, he commits suicide. After 40 years, Red finally gets parole and visits the place in Buxton that Andy told him about. He digs up 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 films I have ever seen, and I also had the chance to watch it again in our class thanks to Professor Ryan Duffy. This movie had several moral principles that made me think a lot throughout the movie. The first major ethical principle existing in the film was power. Almost every character imposed enough power to create consequences that were considered sinful. The most intense were the guards, who used merciless force on prisoners without sympathy. This is immoral because some prisoners may not even have been guilty, but falsely convicted and punished for nothing. Yet since we cannot identify this with certainty, as an audience and given the way the film shows the guard's cruelty, we feel sympathy for the beaten and tortured prisoners and are convinced that he acts in a truly immoral way of dealing with authority. They abuse their power to gain respect from the prisoner, but instead receive the opposite. Another character linked to this was Norton, the Director, who assumed that his words ruled Shawshank Prison. He viewed prisoners as having no purpose in the world or having any value, and therefore tortured them without thought of their personal lives, another moral issue. An example of the cruelty that truly amazed me was the death of the new prisoner, who declared his feelings of innocence and was murdered on the spot by the guards. It felt like criticism to me to overcome a voice or an opinion, because none of the prisoners could show any sort of sorrow or annoyance without being tortured. Another way power was used in an incorrect sense was the Inside Out program, which clearly promoted slavery. I found it interesting to see the prisoners willing to work for the program, while from an outside perspective I saw it all as slave labor and a corrupt use of their power. Norton basically made them work for money, having no kindness towards the inmates. This is profound exploitation since he used the diligent work and discipline of others as a method to help himself and obtain all the resources. He was also in conflict with his religious standards, because he held so strongly to the Bible while doing things that the Bible would totally reject. An example of his conflict with the Bible is when he murders Thomas, the new prisoner, because he knew the reality and without any further explanation. Regardless, despite the fact that the above depictions caused me to identify more with Dufresne and Red than with the guards and Norton, these two also did things that conflicted with the right standards. Dufresne, while trying to make tracks in a direction opposite to that of Norton. prison, began working in the prison money office and.