Jeremy Todd
November 13, 2012
A ED Blog Post 4
The film
that I chose to analyze in this post is one of my all-time favorites, The
Shawshank Redemption. The 1994 film starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman is
a story about a wrongly accused banker Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) who is
sentenced to life in prison for the murder of his wife. While in prison he
meets Red (Morgan Freeman) who befriends him and together they brave the
corrupt world behind bars. With an ingenious plan, Andy outsmarts the warden
and escapes from prison and exposes the corruption that was ever-present inside
the walls of Shawshank Prison.
I chose
this film to analyze an example of a single story because throughout the film
Andy is grouped with all the other criminals and treated as a murder even
though he never killed anyone. In addition, the other characters in the movie
all show remorse and personal change after being in prison, but the warden and
guards fail to recognize the strides that most of the prisoners have made since
being locked up. The single story that applies to Andy perpetuates the
stereotype of criminals that in no way applies to the shy, mild-mannered Andy
Dufresne. This single story provides a limiting view of Andy’s life, only the
view of him as a vicious criminal. However, the film creates the plot in such a
way that challenges this single story and shows that there is much more to Andy
Dufresne than is described by this single story.
