Andy Dufresne's Search for a Perfect World in the Shawshank Redemption
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 "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, murdere...