Are you a Brooks or a Red?
One scene from The Shawshank Redemption(1994) that stung me so hard was Brooks’s tragic death. I think this was a breaking point for most of us who loved the movie. And how Brooks’s story ended in a lonely apartment while his life out of the prison felt more stagnant than the prison was heart rending to acknowledge. Then there is Red who “almost” went through the same fate but decided to escape the loop. Can we relate to this? Or have we ever faced what Brooks went through in solitary? Or have we ever decided to escape this fixed cyclic institutions like Red? Will see. I decided to elaborate and see whether we can relate to this in the modern world as my first piece of writing on Medium. :)
Remember Red? Of course!!! Everyone’s favourite. For me, the above dialogue is one of the most powerful and profound dialogues of him. It shows how the fixed prison institution makes the prisoners congenial to its own set of morals, behaviours and life style. Even though first it started as a coping mechanism for them, slowly the institution is familiarising the imprisonment and prisoners are getting more comfortable with its recession. Which becomes their way of life and their newly found state of mind.
This is why Brooks finds it so hard to leave the prison and adapt because the “free” life out of the prison felt alienated and isolated for him in his established imprisoned state of mind. He got to spend his life in prison more than his life out side of it. Hence, prison has instinctively become his regular comfort lifestyle. He enjoyed the little pace of being a prison librarian than adjusting himself to world that he complains as “everyone got themselves in a hurry”. Snatching his institution away from him by freeing him to a more independent world, segregates him from the psyche he was comfortably relying on. This ultimately leads him to end his life as a prisoner against the free, independent world.
Later in the movie we see that Red was also gradually turning himself into the same mindset as Brooks. We see how his perspectives change within the long period of imprisonment. But, the difference I see between Brooks and Red is, Red was aware of the work of institutionalisation and it was much validated after witnessing Brooks’s fate while Brooks was unconsciously put into the situation by the system it self. When Red was finally paroled we can see a similar cycle of trying to adjust himself to the outside world just like Brooks did. Until he decides to take a different path without trying to escape from it. In my opinion his awareness of the fixated life itself helps him to outgrow the institutionalised loop. I don’t think it was easy for him to come out of the rooted traits but he brings himself to a higher understanding of life where he decides to break the mental chains and shackles.
What so significant about this whole scene is that these metaphorical walls Red talked about that day inside the prison still exist in our modern world. Aren’t they? We do live in our own prisons with mental chains and shackles. I’m not going to name them as such but, think. ;)
Some of us look at them as the identity of our life and we let these vivid institutional prisons to rigidify our thoughts, behaviours and even our personalities because we grow up with them for a long time.Hence, those are deep rooted. Most of these institutions are generational and situational and we do not try to go beyond it’s walls because sometimes, just like Brooks, we are comfortable to know that the walls give us some sort of reassurance as much as the stagnation it carries within.
And then some of us identify these institutions as oppressing political systems and even though we were brought up in certain deep rooted prisons we struggle and we fight hard to outgrow them. Being aware and knowing how the system is operated and witnessing the reality of it, support us to understand the imprisonment behind the institutions and outgrow the toxic loop without being a victim to the institutionalisation. Just like Red twisted the plot of his story.
When the Stafford psychologist, Carol Dweck introduced the fixed mindset and growth mindset concept in her book “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (2006)” she analyses how these two traits of our mind can effect every aspect of our life. A fixed mindset believes that a person cannot simply change character, intelligence, beliefs or thoughts that have given to us by the deep rooted institutions. Just as Brooks found hardships when his fixated life was swaped. But a growth mindset, on the other hand, decides to outgrow and break the fixed belief system and attempt to look at the life and opportunities in a in a broader perspective. When Red overcame his emotional struggles by breaking down the institutionalised fixed mindset he was free to look at the world in an independent vision.
We can see how this movie brings out the theme, The paradox of life choices by a simple yet remarkable scene of Brooks and Red marking their presence on the apartment ceiling beam. They both were in the same setting struggling an emotional battle to overcome the repression on different times. Just like all of us struggle with different institutions everyday on one setting. This planet. But, It is you who decide whether you are going to be a Brooks or a Red in the end of your struggle. :)
