About ten years after that day on the plate-shop roof, Red and Andy have a conversation about Andy’s job taking care of the prison guard’s’ illegally earned money. In this conversation Andy says that his conscience is relatively untroubled since these illegal dealings would have gone on with or without him. Also Andy justifies his action by saying that since he is a victim of great injustice, he does not have any obligations to act like a saint in a place no similar to hell as Shawshank.
More interestingly, in this conversation Andy talks about choosing the lesser of two evils. In a place like Shawshank, Andy bitterly says that there are only two groups of people. One are those who remain totally pure but who get dirty anyway because “the pigeons land on your shoulders and crap all over your shirt,” and the others are those who embrace the dirty and totally give themselves into cash. However, Andy goes on to say that there’s a third choice.
“But you don’t do it. Because guys like us, Red, we know there’s a third choice. An alternative to staying simon-pure or bathing in the filth and the slime. It’s the alternative that grown-ups all over the work pick. You balance off your walk through the hog-wallow against what it gains you. You choose the lesser of two evils and try to keep your good intentions in front of you. And I guess you judge how well you’re doing by how well you sleep at night … and what your dreams are like.”
However, after reading this part of the book the question of whether Andy was really choosing the lesser of two evils remained in my mind. Although Andy justifies his action by saying that taking care of the dirty money of the warden was the best thing he could do since remaining saintly pure would be detrimental for the well-being of his prison life and also because he wasn’t actually taking part in the illegal money making process anyway. However, it is doubtful whether he did those actions with real good intentions or rather for his self-interest such as his own private headquarters and good treatment from the wardens. Thus at first glance, these words of Andy seemed hypocritical.
However, it is hard to blame Andy for taking selfish measures in the prison since as Red mentions Andy is “an innocent man who had been victimized by colossal bad luck, not a missionary or a do-gooder.” Also it is almost impossible to expect Andy to do a humanitarian act when he feels he has been unjustly punished by the society. In this sense, it would be more accurate to say that for Andy “good intentions” isn’t the welfare of the general human race or more specifically the well-being of his conscience but rather his survival, escape and freedom. Perhaps we can conclude that as long as “freedom” was involved, for Andy everything was for “good intentions.”
Interesting concept to respond to, Amy. I never felt any need to evaluate Andy's moral compass, but you raise the issue and in hindsight my impressions of Andy do include words like "crafty" and "calculated," and the film definitely brings some of those things to light with Tim Robin's amazing performance. I'm not sure if the line in the film is the same in the book, but Andy says "I had to come to prison to become a criminal." Ironic. Even more ironic is that he had to come to prison to truly become free.
답글삭제All in all, Andy gave more than he ever took, and I think we'd have to really search for two characters in a film that establish as much convincing connection as Red and Andy.
Good work, and thanks for the two links. I learned something.