Shaw Shank Redemption Ethical Dilemmas - Film Analysis Essay

Introduction

There have been suggestions that through the cultural works such as the literature, art, and film of a society someone can get insight on what that society's customs, ethical beliefs, and values are. When considering the Shaw Shank Redemption film of 1994, which is a story about a man who was sent in prison wrongfully but finally gained freedom; the audience can get a great insight into two of the most important ethical principles that help manage the society. The audience is given a setting against which to base the moral principles of power and justice and the kind of repercussions imposed on the community through the process in which those principles are handled. With the ethical tenets also comes a situation where a character is faced with a moral dilemma that he or she finds it hard to get out of. All this is shown in the film by the several characters and situations as discussed below.

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The quote "Get busy living', or get busy dying'" could as well be a motivational one rather than one that indicates a moral dilemma situation. Andy knows that he has been charged for something that he did not do. He has been serving his jail sentence for a long time now. He can choose to let the injustices he is being subjected to continue or at least seek the truth that will get him out of prison and the suffering associated with that life. Andy and the other inmates after being poorly treated by the warden seek revenge on him. This leads to the warden committing suicide. The warden deserved to be mistreated after the way he had used his power and abused inmates. On the other hand, despite this, he did not deserve to die, (Jacobsen 90). This is an ethical dilemma because in some way Andy and the inmates are partially responsible for the warden's suicide, but then again one can see that he deserved to go through the same misery that he had put others in.

The situation where the guards treat prisoners in inhumanely and beat them up excessively posses an ethical dilemma. The truth is prisoners are put in jail to be punished and not treated with dignity like guests. They did wrong before being sent there, the moment they became criminals, they forfeited the right of being treated fairly. However, this fact does not justify the way guards take advantage of their power and abuse prisoners. They punish them so inhumanly it goes beyond their ethical obligations as law keepers and punishers. In another incident, Andy decides to entertain the other inmates by letting the music play on. He knows very well that he will get in trouble if he was found playing music for others, (Teays & Wanda 224). But the way the prisoners love the music makes him stuck between stopping the music and taking away his fellow inmates' source of short-lived joy or letting it play and getting punished for the sake of everyone else's happiness.

Because of the distance between Andy and his wife, she ends up having an affair with another man. She was only doing it for her own sake and a chance at being happy with someone she feels close to even if for just a short moment. However, it does not make it right for her to cheat on her legally wedded husband. Under different circumstances like the death of a partner or a separation, it would have been morally right for her to do so. However, this situation does not make it right. This is also another situation that poses an ethical dilemma in the movie.

This movie depicts the type of ethical dilemmas the characters face while working or being inmates at the Shaw Shank prison. The guards at the prison get faced with ethical dilemmas; the other guards could go ahead and commit inhuman crimes to prisoners without any fear of reprisal from the legal system. This is because the other officers would never break the code of silence and give up their colleague. Even though the actions of the other guards could lead to the death of an innocent man, one guard can never open his mouth to speak against the other, (Shawshank Redemption 122). This is the kind of ethical dilemma characters are put under in the movie.

In the Shaw Shank Redemption film, Andy is the leading example of the correct definition of ethics of care. On page 38 of (Shawshank Redemption), Andy defines what he understands to be the meaning of the term reasonable as meeting other people's needs while at the same time inspiring and maintaining relationships. His goodness got realized when he helped Captain Hadley with the IRS tax papers that came with the 35 thousand his brother had left for him after his death. After this incident, the other guards together with the Warden realized Andy's talent with forms. From that day he used to offer his help to anyone that required assistance with tax returns, which ended with him helping the Warden to launder money. He used this gained advantage to help his fellow prisoners. He wrote a letter on a weekly basis to the state, and it is through this that he got awarded a yearly 500 dollars amount which was directed to fund the prison library. The library was not just for him to use but for every inmate.

Andy empowered and enriched the lives of other people by teaching them whenever they got stuck. This is how most of the inmates were able to pass their GED. Andy ends up escaping but he does not forget his friend Red, he leaves behind some money so that Red could also find a way to escape and join him in the free world. For every good deed he did to the people he interacted with at the Shaw shank State Prison, Andy is a kind-hearted person. He declares that "on the outside, I was an honest man, straight as an arrow, I had to come to prison to become a crook," when the warden refused to assist him to reopen his case from the new evidence he had come to learn of from Tommy. The warden apart from denying to help Andy get out of prison, went ahead to kill Tommy so that there could not be any evidence that would get Andy out of jail. However, because Andy was so determined to end his sentence, he came up with another solution, but through corruption. It is surprising when Andy ends up escaping prison with 370 thousand dollars of the laundered money, (Jacobsen 162). He went ahead to write a letter addressing the level of corruption that was present in Shaw shank prison. This was Andy's final move that left everyone involved in the fraud in checkmate mode.

A utilitarianism ethical system is one that claims that the most significant good is one that leads to the essential happiness for the highest number. By speaking up about who the real murderer in the case that got Andy arrested was, Tommy, did the right thing. But because the Warden was too selfish to let go of Andy for the money laundering business, he kills Tommy so Andy's case cannot be reopened. The ethical formalism would say that this kind of a decision from a central character is one that indicates utilitarianism, (Teays & Wanda 150). If Andy' case got opened, an innocent man could get released and a corrupt one exposed and also the taxpayer's dollars could get saved.

Another ethical system is the egoistic one that labels the quest of self-interest as a moral good. Throughout the movie, everything always came down to how to get more money through deceptive and wrong ways. The warden and the captain never had anyone's interest at heart but their selfish self-interest. Good examples are before the captain throws Andy off the roof when they allow Andy to do the tax returns and the inside out program of 1959 incident. Some characters might have benefited from the egoism behavior and the overall results, but the actions were always meant for evil intentions that only were for personal achievements. And the sad thing is that those characters believed their efforts were ethically right, (Shawshank Redemption 173). Some of these characters were Bogs Diamond, the leader of 'sisters' whom together with his squad relished in sexually assaulting Andy and Elmo Blatch who murdered and robbed Mrs. Dufresne and Glenn Quentin, the golf player. These two victimized Andy by attacking him and letting Andy got charged with the murder he did not commit.

The corruption and delayed justice practice by the warden is a societal issue. Throughout the movie, the quote "justice delayed is justice denied" is reflected and mostly through official figures. When the warden who is the legal professional in charge of the inmates refused one of them his right of a second hearing, it just reflects how the societal, legal system that we so heavily rely on can play a significant role in robbing the freedom an innocent person so legally ought to have. Criminal ethics are taught to every person in such positions so that they can know better than to make such mistakes. However, the people in these positions have designed this system in a way that they can use it to their advantage and gain, (Jacobsen & Michael 231). They use the authority and power they have to create opportunities that allow them to make unethical and immoral decisions to benefit themselves through bribes and kickbacks.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it all comes back to how the society offers justice to those who deserve it. The legal system convicted an innocent person who had to go to prison and suffer for others. In his pursuit of freedom, those people that he trusted to help him seek justice end up turning against him out of self-interest. Andy eventually has to seek freedom in his way by escaping prison because it is the only way that he could help himself. He could not depend on the permissible system to do its work. He is still innocent in this sense because he did not commit any crime by escaping prison, a place that he did not deserve to be in the first place. By wrongfully convicting an innocent person, they almost turned him into a real criminal. This movie is the right reflection of what the society of today is made up of and how its people are made victims by the same system that should be protecting them from harm's way.

Works Cited

Jacobsen, Michael H. The Poetics of Crime: Understanding and Researching Crime and Deviance Through Creative Sources. London: Taylor and Francis, 2016.

Shawshank Redemption. Place of publication not identified: Book On Demand, 2012. Top of Form

Teays, Wanda. Seeing the Light: Exploring Ethics Through Movies. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.