Prisoners vs.

the Institution:
Resistance in The Shawshank Redemption
Danielle Koh Weizhi

he film The Shawshank Redemption addresses the process and consequences

T of institutionalization. Released in 1994 and directed by Frank Darabont,

it is based on a novella by Stephen King titled Rita Hayworth and The
Shawshank Redemption. Both works trace the lives of long-term prisoners in
Shawshank Prison. The fictional penitentiary, located in Maine, is run by the
corrupt Warden Norton and guard captain Byron Hadley, the former involved in
money laundering and bribery, while the latter verbally and physically abuses
inmates. The story is narrated by the character Ellis Redding (or ‘Red’) and is
about his friend, Andy Dufresne. Andy, a successful banker, has been falsely
convicted for the murder of his wife and her lover and is serving two life sentences
in Shawshank prison. The film follows Andy’s struggle for survival in prison,
facing violence, rape, betrayal and exploitation, until his eventual escape back to
the outside world.
One of the most striking scenes in the film is when Brooks, a 70-year-
old inmate who has spent his last 50 years imprisoned, holds a knife to his friend
Heywood’s throat. Brooks cries tearfully, “It’s the only way they’d let me stay [in
Shawshank].” Brooks has been paroled but he has become so used to prison life
that he fears the world outside and refers to Shawshank as his home. Eventually,
Brooks kills himself in a boarding house, after finding life on the outside
threatening, lonely and meaningless. At the other extreme, Andy is described by
Red as “[having] on an invisible coat that would shield him from [Shawshank],”
as if he were immune to and independent of the institution. Andy plans his
escape from Shawshank Prison for twenty years, meticulously and determinedly
digging through his cell wall with a tiny rock hammer. While Brooks is driven
to threatening a friend in order to stay in prison, by contrast Andy is willing to
dig through his cell wall and crawl through five hundred yards of sewage pipes to
freedom. Looking at how the film portrays Andy as immune to the
institutionalization processes in Shawshank, a question can be raised as to whether
it is as overwhelming as it seems here: to what extent does institutionalization
occur within Shawshank Prison, according to the film?
Since the birth of the modern prison in the 19th century, there has been
much debate over the construction, purpose and effects of imprisonment. One
consequence of imprisonment is what sociologist Donald Clemmer, who

36 • prisoners vs. the institution

documents prison institutionalization in his book The Prison Community, refers to
as “prisonization,” a process that institutionalizes long-term prisoners and produces
“the internalization of a criminal self concept” (qtd. in McCorkle 89). Another
sociologist, Erving Goffman, defines institutionalization as the manner in which
total institutions affect “the structure of the self” (qtd. in Myles 1970). In this
case, the total institution is the prison, creating norms and a lifestyle that only
exists within the penal environment. This provides prisoners with an identity in
line with their new institutional status: an “imposition of the inmate role” (Myles
1970) that completely replaces the identity they had in the outside world.
Institutionalization is seemingly impossible to resist in Shawshank. Yet
the power relationship between those in charge of Shawshank and its prisoners is
much more dynamic and nuanced than it initially appears: the prisoners are not
entirely and passively at the mercy of the institution. They are able to find loopholes
in the overarching penal environment that gives them the opportunity to resist.
In particular, Andy is successfully able to resist institutionalization because he
imagines a space outside Shawshank where he has the freedom of individual choice.
This private mental space allows him to think independently of his surrounding
institution, retaining his identity and preventing the complete “imposition of
the inmate role.” The penal institution constrains physical space and behavior
but cannot constrain thought and attitude.
As viewers, we are immediately presented with the overwhelming penal
environment when we follow Andy into Shawshank and experience it for the first
time through his eyes. Cinematographer Roger Deakins pans the awesome gothic
prison site and we see the emphasis on exclusion in imprisonment. Shawshank is
separated from the rest of society by stone walls and fences and it is precisely
because of this spatial constraint that a distinct prison order can exist: a prison
system consisting of those rejected by external society and controlled by instituted
authority. The prisoners’ physical exclusion from the rest of society is what causes
them to become heavily dependent on the penal institution. Geographers Stanley
Brunn, Harri Andersson and Carl Dahlman associate social position and spaces in
their paper “Landscaping for Power and Defence.” Social positions, they argue,
are reinforced by “the symbolic register of exclusion and enclave” through the
individual’s “access, mobility and interpretation of space” (Brunn, Andersson,
and Dahlman 70). The built environment gives as well as denies privileges based
on social status. In Shawshank, the prisoners’ identity is defined by their lack of
individual freedom and mobility and reinforced by their physical exclusion from
participating in external society. As prisoners, their social position is defined by
their location and the presence of authority, Warden Norton and Captain Hadley.

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This is drilled into the fresh batch of inmates in Norton’s first speech to them:
“This is Mr. Hadley, the captain of the guards. I am Mr. Norton, the warden, and
you, are convicted felons…. Your ass belongs to me. Welcome to Shawshank.”
The new inmates are not only reminded by Norton that they are now completely
excluded from regular society, but also that their position as “convicted felons” in
the prison hierarchy is entirely useless and powerless against institutional authority.
Their exclusion from external society emphasizes the distinct social order and
hierarchy that exists in prison.
This combination of exclusion and the presence of absolute authority
creates an overpowering prison environment that is difficult to oppose. The endless
surveillance and inspections in Shawshank also produce an institutionalized
behavioral norm. Michel Foucault discusses the role of surveillance and observation
in perpetuating such an institutional setting. In an interview with Jean-Pierre
Barou and Michelle Perrot Foucault refers to the power of the “gaze,” that is,
mere observation, in controlling people. “Just a gaze” (“Eye” 155) is sufficient to
make people “lose the power and even almost the idea of wrong-doing ... to make
[them] unable and unwilling” (“Eye” 154) to commit certain actions. Because
authority and surveillance are so prevalent in the presence of guards in Shawshank,
inmates adjust visible actions to avoid punishment, producing a standardised
behavior that Foucault refers to as “interiorisation” (“Eye” 154). Interiorisation
occurs when an individual restrains his actions so much to conform to the
acceptable norm dictated by his surveyors that it becomes natural behavior.
Cinematographer Deakins films the courtyard at a high angle, suggesting the
presence of an overseeing invisible power and also highlighting the watch-towers
and constant surveillance. From this angle, viewers perceive the inmates as a
grey, indistinct mass. According to Foucault, the combination of supervision and
“perpetual penality” (Discipline 182) produces the “constraint of a conformity
that must be achieved.” Surveillance has the power to produce standardization of
behavior, with the threat of punishment in cases of deviance from the norm. In
the film, during Andy’s first night in Shawshank, a new inmate is beaten to
death by Hadley for crying. But what is more important, Hadley drags the inmate
out of his cell into a space where other inmates can hear and see his pain before
the beating commences: he uses the death of an inmate as a threat of punishment
of nonstandard behavior to intimidate the other prisoners. Thus, conforming to
the dictated norm is part of institutionalisation: inmates’ thought and behavior
become distinct from external society’s and are instead forced to converge with
the norm of the institution. Surveillance and punishment come together to force
prisoners to adopt a behavioral norm. An example of this normalization in The

38 • prisoners vs. the institution

Shawshank Redemption is seen when Red, while on parole, is told by his boss: “You
don’t have to ask for permission every time you want to take a piss, alright?”
Contrast this with a statement made by Hadley as Andy enters Shawshank: “You
piss when we say you piss!” In Shawshank, the practice of asking for permission
before acting is perpetuated by the guards, and thereby the inferiority of prisoners’
social position. Red’s habit of searching for approval before committing any actions
is cultivated by the prison environment and this norm is so internalised that he
cannot readjust even while on parole. The powerful hierarchical authority and
physical separateness of Shawshank from the rest of society produces a total
institution where resistance is almost impossible. Yet, the film suggests, on the
contrary, that the rigid institutional structure can be broken.
Despite the strong surveillance in prison, inmates are still able to
manipulate the authorities and act without their knowledge. In the film, Red is
the “guy who can get it for you”: he sells contraband. Red operates in secret,
avoiding the knowledge and observation of the authorities. Such behavior is a
form of resistance as it breaks the behavioral norm administered. Red also easily
bribes a guard, without consequences, to get an outdoor detailing job. According
to the film, the pursuit of self-interest by prison guards allows Red to manipulate
the prison structure to his benefit. However, while Red sells contraband, Andy
breaks the imposed norm in a different way: he offers financial advice to guards,
thereby disrupting the conventional officer-prisoner power relationship. In return,
“exceptions [are] made” for Andy; he is let off from laundry work and placed in
the library. In addition, the guards treat him with familiarity, trust and respect,
shaking his hand after financial consultation and even congratulating Andy (“Good
for you, Andy!”) on getting government funding for the library. Andy is given a
position that is neither lowly inmate nor instituted authority, and thus not part
of the conventional penal structure. Since becoming institutionalized is to become
reliant on the institutional structure, he resists the prison hierarchy by occupying
a position that falls outside of it.
In their paper “Resocialization Within Walls,” sociologists McCorkle
and Korn discuss how the “breakdown of the social distance between the inmate
and his keeper” would result in the “exploitation of one by the other and the
ultimate degradation of one or both” (93). This occurs in the relationship between
Warden Norton and Andy. Andy becomes Norton’s personal financial manager
and this results in the exploitation of Andy’s skills by Norton. However, because
Norton is very aware of Andy’s ability to ruin his reputation, he displays his
institutional power by placing Andy in isolation for two months to remind him
of his position as inmate and the “social distance” between them. This is an

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example of what McCorkle and Korn term a “convincing show of force” (94), an
attempt by Norton to re-establish hierarchy. Andy’s eventual exposure of Norton’s
corruption is an act of resistance and revenge against prison authority and
contributes to Norton’s “ultimate degradation.” The reversal of the power
relationship between Norton and Andy occurs because, according to McCorkle
and Korn, Norton does not maintain the “crippling limits” of “social distance”
between inmate and warden, reducing the power and efficiency of the institution
and creating the opportunity for Andy to resist.
The reason why Andy is able to use his education and expertise to break
the prison hierarchy so successfully is because being educated is an internal quality
that is immaterial and irremovable. Foucault identifies as a weakness of the prison
what Michelle Perrot terms the “opacity” (“Eye” 161) of prisoners, which gives
them the ability to resist the institution. Prisoners have internal traits, qualities,
thoughts and attitudes that can remain unknown to the institution and be used
against it. The disciplinary structure of penal institutions has sometimes naïvely
assumed a “tabula rasa of subjects to be reformed” (“Eye” 162), and thus that both
the use of surveillance and punishment should induce interiorisation and
conformation. Yet, this, according to Foucault, is too idealistic. Continual
surveillance and the threat of punishment cannot render a prisoner completely
transparent. Even though the prison authorities are aware of Andy’s intelligence
and financial knowledge, they can only observe his visible actions and not know
what his actual thoughts and attitudes are. In the film, when Andy puts up the
poster of Rita Hayworth, he is never suspected of concealing an escape tunnel.
Andy behaves routinely the night he escapes from prison: he closes the Warden’s
books, reports as usual to the prison guard on night duty and returns to his cell.
Andy conceals his escape plan in his mind, masking his behavior by sticking to a
standardised routine. No amount of surveillance can see through a prisoner
completely, so thoughts of resistance are possible through concealing them.
This lack of transparency is what allows Andy to create a private mental
space for himself. In this way, the film suggests, he preserves his own freedom of
choice and retains his individuality, therefore mentally resisting interiorisation
and conformation to the institution. In his paper “Social Issues of Law and Order,”
sociologist Zygmunt Bauman addresses post-modern incarceration and spatial
confinement. He defines being human as having “constant choice” (206) and
“freedom of choice,” where “choice has acquired … a spatial dimension” (216).
Bauman links being human and being alive to having the personal space and
ability to make choices. Hence, because of prisoners’ immobility, they lose their
individuality and are susceptible to institutionalization. In the film, because Andy

40 • prisoners vs. the institution

lacks the physical space to assert himself in Shawshank, he does so mentally instead,
transcending material constraints placed on him in prison. When asked how he
survived two weeks in isolation, Andy replies that it was the “easiest time he ever
did” because he had “Mr. Mozart to keep [him] company,” pointing to his heart,
indicating that the opera is within him. Music is, according to Andy, “something
inside that they can’t get to.” This highlights Andy’s belief in the need for spaces
within the self that cannot be taken away by the authorities in order to survive in
prison. Such a space gives inmates the freedom to remember “that there are places
in the world that aren’t made of stone.” The Shawshank Redemption suggests that,
in order to resist the institution, inmates must remember and imagine themselves
in the world beyond prison. Despite their incarceration, they should be living as
individuals who have the power to imagine and choose, instead of as prisoners.
At the beginning of the film, the prisoners discuss their parole rejection
and one mentions how he is “up for rejection next week.” As viewers, we can
immediately feel the resignation and hopelessness of these words; the prisoners
are resigned to rejection even before the interview takes place. Red laments that
the authorities “sent [him] [to prison] for life, and that’s exactly what they [took]”
from him, revealing his dejection. With long prison sentences, a sense of nihilism
sets in with time and prisoners become resigned to their confinement and life in
prison. This makes them more vulnerable to becoming dependent on the
surrounding institution. Through his mental space, Andy resists also the sense of
nihilism that can exist within a prison environment and attempts to spread this
resistance to other inmates. The theologian William Young discusses the losing
and gaining of hope in the film in his essay “The Shawshank Redemption and the
Hope for Escape.” According to Young, Andy resists this nihilism of Shawshank,
“giving hope” and “a sense of freedom” to his fellow inmates through
“demonstrating a freedom that cannot be destroyed by prison walls” (193). The
film suggests that Andy spreads the power of self-belief and imagination to the
other prisoners to help them oppose the prison environment. We see this in his
motivation for an improved library; the very nature of books and literature provides
an escape from Shawshank and reminds prisoners of an alternative environment.
Another example occurs when, in exchange for financial advice, Andy asks Hadley
for beers for his co-workers. This gives his friends the chance to “[sit] and [drink]
with the sun on [their shoulders]” and “[feel] like free men.” In the scene, the
guards stand in the background, watching the prisoners in the sunlight in the
foreground, highlighting the brief respite from the routine of prison life and
hierarchy. Here, Andy gave his friends the power to imagine that they were, in
Red’s words, “the lords of all creation.” In another episode, Andy defies instructions

folio • 41
given to him by the guards and plays, on the prison sound system, Mozart’s The
Marriage of Figaro. The prisoners and guards stand frozen and entranced in the
prison yard. Red compares the opera to a “beautiful bird [that] flapped into [their]
drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away.” He imagines the voices as
birds, bodies of freedom and flight, which take the prisoners away from Shawshank.
Andy’s act of rebellion is purposely shared with the rest of the inmates—it gives
them the chance to imagine spaces independent of the prison, for their minds to
resist the institutional environment, so that “every last man at Shawshank [could
feel] free.”
In the end, the film implies that Andy’s physical escape from Shawshank
is a realization of his mental one. He escapes to Zihuatanejo, a Mexican city to
which he had dreamt of going while in prison. Red shoots the idea down as
“shitty pipe dreams.” He finds Andy’s plan to escape illusory and dangerous, but
Andy manages to translate it into real flight, which the film suggests demonstrates
his incredible belief in his own ability and right to control his life. However, the
film also ironically demonstrates that Andy’s individuality is inseparable from
his experience of Shawshank, ranging from being used by the corrupt prison
authorities to finding proof of his innocence within prison walls. What Perrot, in
the interview with Foucault, terms the “opacity” of prisoners (“Eye” 161) gives
them the ability to resist; The Shawshank Redemption seems to say that this opacity
also enables a unique and hidden individual response to the institution. If this is
so, then the harshness of this penal environment and Andy’s personal experiences
with the prison system and corruption would be what the film suggests leads
him to create his exclusive mind space, avoiding the dependence that results
from societal exclusion and eventually escaping the physical boundaries of
Shawshank Prison.

Works Cited
Bauman, Zygmunt. “Social Issues of Law and Order.” British Journal of
Criminology 40.2 (2000): 205-221. Print.
Brunn, Stanley D, Harri Andersson and Carl T. Dahlman. “Landscaping for
Power and Defence.” Landscapes of Defence. Ed. J. R. Gold and G.
Revill. London: Pearson, 2000. 68-84. Print.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan
Sheridan. New York: Random House, 1977. Print.
–––––. “The Eye of Power.” Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other

42 • prisoners vs. the institution

 Writings. 1972 – 1977. 3rd ed. Ed. Colin Gordon. Trans. Colin Gordon
et al. New York: Pantheon, 1980. 146-165. Print.
McCorkle, Lloyd W, and Richard Korn. “Resocialisation within Walls.” Annals
of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 293 (1954): 88-98.
Print.
Myles, John F. “Institutionalization and Sick Role Identification Among the
Elderly.” American Sociological Review 43.4 (1978): 508-521. Print.
The Shawshank Redemption. Directed by Frank Darabont. Castle Rock
Entertainment, 1994. DVD.
Young, William. “The Shawshank Redemption and the Hope for Escape.”
Movies and the Meaning of Life: Philosophers Take on Hollywood. Eds. K.
A. Blessing and P. J. Tudico. Chicago: Open Court, 2005. 184-198.
Print.

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