Shawshank Redemption Essay

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The Ending Scene – Shawshank Redemption In the film Shawshank Redemption, the director Frank Darabont uses many great visual and aural aspects to enhance ideas and themes to the audience. The scene I will be analyzing is ‘The Ending Scene’. Darabont uses soundtrack, colour, close ups and symbolism. ‘The Ending Scene’ is focused around Red and his departure from Shawshank prison. He is finding life hard on the outside and can’t see the point in embracing life or the future any more; he doesn’t want to continue living in fear. But there’s one thing stopping him a promise he made too Andy Dufrense. Darabont uses symbolism to portray a major theme, hope. In the first shot of ‘The Ending Scene’ we see a rock wall. Rocks play a big role in the film they bring hope to some characters but also torment and suffering to others. Andy shows quite an interest in rocks, he uses this as a distraction from the daily prison life. He begins to sculpt them. This serves as a cover up for owning the rock hammer, which he uses for his escape. Most importantly sculpting the rocks gives Andy hope, he makes hope a reality, in the form of the little amount of progress he makes each year tunneling through his cell wall. This determination maintains Andy’s sense of normality and self-worth, which keeps him sane throughout his time at Shawshank prison. Andy would give his sculptures away to Red and other inmates in the prison. This was Andy’s way of transferring his sense of hope to others. The rock wall that we see in the opening shot is an example of hope for Red. As Andy says in his letter ‘hope is a good thing’ Red realizes that hope is all he has left. When Red lifts up the rock that doesn’t fit in, the rock is a metaphorical representation of Andy because Andy always stood out from the crowd as Red lifts up the rock to reveal the box of contents left or him by any he is lifting off

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