The Lifespace (Part 3)

This is the final installment of the series on The Lifespace.

In the movie "Shawshank Redemption," I have previously discussed the experience of Brooks Hatlen (James Whitmore) and Red Redding (Morgan Freeman) in the light of the lifespace theory proposed by Kurt Lewin.

There was another character in the movie, Andy Dufresne played by Tim Robbins. Andy had a different experience. Inside prison, he never ceased to hope for freedom. To his friend Red, he said,

"Hope is a good thing. Maybe the best thing. And, no good thing ever dies."

Unlike Red and Brooks whose entire worlds ( both mind and body) were limited to the confines of the prison wall, Andy's encompassed the outside. He did not allow his mind to be imprisoned. It is this consciousness that never killed his desire to escape. Andy spent 20 years at Shawshank Prison. In those 20 years he worked on his escape. He did manage to escape.

One thing that worked in favor of Andy was that he was a professional and working as a banker when he went in. So he had his formation on the outside. In a sense, he was already "fully formed" when he got in. Red and Brooks, on the other hand, were very young when they got in and basically grew up - and grew old in prison.

It is important to draw this contrast. Andy's formation was made on the outside. His lifespace was stable. On the part of Red and Brooks, the substantial part of their formation was inside. Whatever early formation they had was later on eclipsed by the prison environment. While they were inside, things had changed dramatically on the outside. They world "passed them by," so to speak.

One more thing that worked in Andy's favor was his education. With these, he managed to keep intact his experience of the outside world with the use of his imagination. "Iron bars do not a prison make", as a poet once said. With his prior knowledge of what the world was, he knew what it was going to be.