So now that we have to start talking about stuff: What do you guys think about Andy so far? A lot of the guys in the prison thought he was stuck up. Do you guys think Andy believes he is better than the rest of the prisoners?
I don't think he's full of himself as much as he is shady. He says that "memory is a subjective thing" when he talks about the clerk who said he bought dishtowels, but if you read his sentence carefully you can get another meaning out of it. He convinced the narrator, Red, that he's innocent. He admitted to being drunk when the events took place, so his memory wouldn't even serve him well. That, combined with how "memory is subjective" can turn into a justification as to why he would lie about his own innocence.
About him being full of himself, I don't think so. I just think he's trying to preserve who he was before he was sent to jail before he got to Shawshank because he isn't really the jail type. He's described as short and neat, with his fingernails always nicely clipped and clean. Plus, he was a banker, and he did banking things for the wardens. Being a short, clean-cut banker doesn't lend itself to the tough guy stereotype, so Andy just keeps to himself. The lack of interaction with others may make them believe that Andy's full of himself, but I don't think he is.
I completely agree that he is trying to preserve his personality from before he got sent to Shawshank. However, I think he has a little bit of a superiority complex. For example, when he is on the roof with Red and the other guys, no one else would have dared to go and talk to Hadley like that, except him. Even when the guy threatened to throw him off the roof, the book says Andy eyes were "like ice" and "it was as if he hadn't heard." Any other guy in the prison probably would have been scared to death.
Still, I don't think it is a bad thing. He sees himself as more of a leader than just someone who is too good for his surroundings. He does a lot of good things for the rest of the prisoners, even if he has to do some bad things to get there. Like he says, "They sell pills and I tell them what to do with the money. But I've also got the library, and I know of over two dozen guys who have used the books in there to help them pass their high school equivalency test. Maybe when they get out of here they'll be able to crawl off the shitheap." (Sorry, the word's in the book.)
Nick, are you saying that Andy isn't full of himself because he may be lying about his innocence? I don't understand the connection there. Besides, we already know that Andy is, in reality, innocent. I believe we stopped our first section of reading right in the middle of the part where it is revealed that Blatch killed Andy's wife and Quentin.
At first, however, I did think that Andy's explanation of memory being subjective was sort of ironic because that logic applies to him also. There is so much evidence stacked against him and his mind is likely in a traumatic state considering his wife's cheating and death. One might, at the beginning, feel that Andy is guilty but convinced that he is innocent.
I agree that Andy is not a conceited person. He acts differently than the rest of the prisoners because he really IS different. Red mentions that everybody in prison claims that they are innocent, but he does not believe most of them. Andy is one of the few, if not the only, prisoner at Shawshank who is really innocent, so why shouldn't he act differently from the rest? I would certainly act a bit out of place if I was the only person in a prison who didn't deserve to be there. As Red noted, everybody at the prison was depressed and tired, except for Andy. Every prisoner knows that he committed a crime and is being punished for it, and they accept that as a fact. They know that they belong in prison and are going to stay in prison.
Andy does not feel this way. Red notices that Andy is not depressed and tired like the other prisoners, but has an "inner light." Andy knows that he is innocent and knows that he does not belong in Shawshank. He has hope, which fuels him to survive and even escape, eventually. Throughout the story you see that Andy is hopeful. He fights the sisters instead of giving up and letting them rape him. He sets up the best prison library in all of New England. He manages to get all of the prison guards on his side. Andy always makes the best of the situation because he, as an innocent man, is filled with hope of surviving and making it out of prison. I'd like to point out that the book is split up into four sections (one for each season) and "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" is in the section, "Hope Springs Eternal." It's pretty clear that this story is focused on the idea of hope.
I, Anthony, feel that Alex is misinterpreting Nick's point, that Andy is not full of himself, and that he is instead a shady character. Nick is only saying that the fact that Andy could be lying goes to prove the point that Andy is shady, not trying to argue that he is not full of himself (which is only Nick's, and my own, opinion). As I just stated, I think that Andy is not full of himself in any way, but at the same time, he is aware that he is different and unique to Shawshank. When explaining how he feels about helping the Guards with their monetary problems, Andy said "that his conscience was relatively untroubled... He had not asked to be sent to Shawshank...he was an innocent man who had been victimized by colossal bad luck, not a missionary or a do-gooder". Andy is not trying to get attention and say I'm the man, and I am better than all of you, and he is also not trying to make himself seem like he is morally above anyone else either. Andy is simply trying to live his life as he would have had he not been wrongfully put in prison. I like Alex's idea that this section is focused mainly on hope, although I'm not sure if I agree entirely. Despite the fact that Andy shows hope on being able to live a normal life when luck goes against you in the worst way possible, so much bad still happens that I think a more appropriate message would be "Never give up" instead of "Never lose hope". While these seem very similar, I think the main difference is that while some would just give in to the Sister's mistreatment of them and hope for a better life one day, Andy fights back and eventually wins against the Sisters, showing that if you keep working hard at it you can overcome.
But overall, I'd say yeah, Andy is a pretty cool guy.
Anthony is right in his interpretation of what I said. I wasn't making that connection, Alex. He isn't full of himself because he's trying to do what he would have done anyway. Going back to his past occupation, Andy was a banker. In jail, he's doing things that a banker would do because he is a banker. He requests all that stuff for rocks because that was one of his interests. Andy is not full of himself because he is only trying to be like he would outside of prison. Outside of prison, he wouldn't interact with many of the convicts he is forced to inside of the prison, so he keeps to himself.
Going back to what Alex and Anthony remarked about what section the book is in, it's not just hope. It's "Hope Springs Eternal". The message is that hope is always there, waiting to pop up and grow. Andy's arrival itself triggers hope beginning to grow. As Alex mentioned with all of Andy's accomplishments, the prisoners can actually hope to become something outside of prison. Without Andy, none of that would have happened. The library would have still been dismal because there was nobody there who would work hard enough to fill it with books and the sisters wouldn't have disbanded. Without Andy, the source of hope for the Shawkshank prisoners, the prison would be a terrible place, unworthy of redemption. See what I did there? Andy was the cause of the Shawkshank redemption.
Ok so basically so far everyone thinks that Andy is in no way full of himself except for me, but just try to hear me out. Yes I agree that Andy is different than most of the prisoners at Shawshank and that he is portraying that in the way that he conducts himself. But I think that in order for Andy to have hope, he needs to have a little bit of a superiority complex. Think about it. Andy is surrounded by a lot of people that most would call "the scum of the earth" for example, men who kill children and guys who rape and murder women. If Andy didn't think that he could somehow rise above some of the awful people that he has been grouped with, he wouldn't have any hope for the future.
Also, I have to add, I don't think "full of himself" is the right phrase. I think he is more of a leader in his enviroment. He doesn't just think he is the best, and therefore is only in it for himself. He realizes that he is one of the more intelligent people in Shawshank, and he uses it to help out his fellow prisoners.
I think Dan's last comment sums up a lot about Andy. Andy did have a lot of hope in his and gave it to others, and his feeling of superiority had to do with that. I think everyone knows that feeling superior to someone, the fact that you can do something that someone else can, makes you feel a lot better about yourself. Also the fact that he is (supposedly) innocent, makes him feel seperated from most of the low-lifes of the prison.
Also, it was not his strength that got him his reputation. He is intellegent, as Dan said, and he had the back of the whole administration. Nobody could touch him. That had to give him a feeling of superiority against everyone. And people look up to him, envying his place in the "society".
I think Anthony is a bit mixed up on the idea of hope. Hoping for things and having hope are, in actuality, two separate concepts. Anybody can hope for something good - who wouldn't? Sure Andy wishes to get out of prison - that desire is held by everybody (barring consideration of the dependency effect Shawshank has on characters such as Brooks... but that's a topic for another time). Actually having hope is a more special quality, which is why Andy is such an exceptional character, mentality-wise. Having hope means much more than wishing for things to be better: it is taking initiative, being confident in achieving your goals, never giving up on your ambitions. For this reason, Andy is definitely a hopeful character. Anthony's point that Andy "never gives up" is completely true; however, that does not have to conflict with the idea of Andy being hopeful. Refusal to give up is an essential part of being hopeful. Andy is a hopeful person who knows that he will make it out of Shawshank, and on his journey towards this goal, he doggedly perseveres through all the struggles he encounters and maintains these beliefs until the end.
In short: Andy is a pretty cool guy, he breaks out of prison and doesn't afraid of anything.
I was reading and noticed something very interesting, which was that right after Andy escapes from prison and the three months after this took place, Warden Norton "lost the spring in his step" and retired from the prison angry and unhappy. I saw the word 'spring' and it immediately made me think of how Alex thought that the ShawShank Redemption was about hope, and how this was also the Spring season story from the entire book. This made my train of thought continue, and I'm interested in what you guys think about this too, but it doesn't seem to make any sense to say that Norton lost his hope when Andy escaped him. A more fitting word would be his power or his control, and yet this doesn't seem to go along with the theme of Hope and Spring. Maybe I'm over thinking that but oh well. On a second note, Dan's rewording of "full of himself" to "a leader" seems to be another way of Dan saying "I was wrong, but I'm going to pretend like I knew what I was talking about". I don't think that you can fairly change the phrasing of being full of oneself to being a leader, because as Dan mentioned, Andy helped other people through his good personality and his helping-hand, and while this can be seen as leadership, it also has nothing to do with him thinking that he is better than anyone else. Andy takes pride in the fact that he helped dozens of men pass their high school equivalency tests, and also, when Norton threatens Andy and uses the library against him, it is evident that people realize how much it means to Andy that even in a place as awful as ShawShank he is helping others out. To say that Andy is a leader, yes, I can agree with that, but that is completely different from being full of yourself and the attempt of a connection between the two that Dan made is nonexistent. Sorry Dan.
Yeah... so overall I really loved the book guys I think we should keep Stephen King and definitely finish all four seasons. Don't forget to respond to my question about the spring in Norton's step.
As a summary here, Andy is a pretty cool guy, doesn't afraid of anything, and all in all I am not disappoint with this book.
I don't think he's full of himself as much as he is shady. He says that "memory is a subjective thing" when he talks about the clerk who said he bought dishtowels, but if you read his sentence carefully you can get another meaning out of it. He convinced the narrator, Red, that he's innocent. He admitted to being drunk when the events took place, so his memory wouldn't even serve him well. That, combined with how "memory is subjective" can turn into a justification as to why he would lie about his own innocence.
ReplyDeleteAbout him being full of himself, I don't think so. I just think he's trying to preserve who he was before he was sent to jail before he got to Shawshank because he isn't really the jail type. He's described as short and neat, with his fingernails always nicely clipped and clean. Plus, he was a banker, and he did banking things for the wardens. Being a short, clean-cut banker doesn't lend itself to the tough guy stereotype, so Andy just keeps to himself. The lack of interaction with others may make them believe that Andy's full of himself, but I don't think he is.
He's still a pretty cool guy, though.
I completely agree that he is trying to preserve his personality from before he got sent to Shawshank. However, I think he has a little bit of a superiority complex. For example, when he is on the roof with Red and the other guys, no one else would have dared to go and talk to Hadley like that, except him. Even when the guy threatened to throw him off the roof, the book says Andy eyes were "like ice" and "it was as if he hadn't heard." Any other guy in the prison probably would have been scared to death.
ReplyDeleteStill, I don't think it is a bad thing. He sees himself as more of a leader than just someone who is too good for his surroundings. He does a lot of good things for the rest of the prisoners, even if he has to do some bad things to get there. Like he says, "They sell pills and I tell them what to do with the money. But I've also got the library, and I know of over two dozen guys who have used the books in there to help them pass their high school equivalency test. Maybe when they get out of here they'll be able to crawl off the shitheap." (Sorry, the word's in the book.)
But yeah, he is a pretty cool guy.
Nick, are you saying that Andy isn't full of himself because he may be lying about his innocence? I don't understand the connection there. Besides, we already know that Andy is, in reality, innocent. I believe we stopped our first section of reading right in the middle of the part where it is revealed that Blatch killed Andy's wife and Quentin.
ReplyDeleteAt first, however, I did think that Andy's explanation of memory being subjective was sort of ironic because that logic applies to him also. There is so much evidence stacked against him and his mind is likely in a traumatic state considering his wife's cheating and death. One might, at the beginning, feel that Andy is guilty but convinced that he is innocent.
I agree that Andy is not a conceited person. He acts differently than the rest of the prisoners because he really IS different. Red mentions that everybody in prison claims that they are innocent, but he does not believe most of them. Andy is one of the few, if not the only, prisoner at Shawshank who is really innocent, so why shouldn't he act differently from the rest? I would certainly act a bit out of place if I was the only person in a prison who didn't deserve to be there. As Red noted, everybody at the prison was depressed and tired, except for Andy. Every prisoner knows that he committed a crime and is being punished for it, and they accept that as a fact. They know that they belong in prison and are going to stay in prison.
Andy does not feel this way. Red notices that Andy is not depressed and tired like the other prisoners, but has an "inner light." Andy knows that he is innocent and knows that he does not belong in Shawshank. He has hope, which fuels him to survive and even escape, eventually. Throughout the story you see that Andy is hopeful. He fights the sisters instead of giving up and letting them rape him. He sets up the best prison library in all of New England. He manages to get all of the prison guards on his side. Andy always makes the best of the situation because he, as an innocent man, is filled with hope of surviving and making it out of prison. I'd like to point out that the book is split up into four sections (one for each season) and "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" is in the section, "Hope Springs Eternal." It's pretty clear that this story is focused on the idea of hope.
So yeah, Andy is a pretty cool guy.
I, Anthony, feel that Alex is misinterpreting Nick's point, that Andy is not full of himself, and that he is instead a shady character. Nick is only saying that the fact that Andy could be lying goes to prove the point that Andy is shady, not trying to argue that he is not full of himself (which is only Nick's, and my own, opinion).
ReplyDeleteAs I just stated, I think that Andy is not full of himself in any way, but at the same time, he is aware that he is different and unique to Shawshank. When explaining how he feels about helping the Guards with their monetary problems, Andy said "that his conscience was relatively untroubled... He had not asked to be sent to Shawshank...he was an innocent man who had been victimized by colossal bad luck, not a missionary or a do-gooder". Andy is not trying to get attention and say I'm the man, and I am better than all of you, and he is also not trying to make himself seem like he is morally above anyone else either. Andy is simply trying to live his life as he would have had he not been wrongfully put in prison.
I like Alex's idea that this section is focused mainly on hope, although I'm not sure if I agree entirely. Despite the fact that Andy shows hope on being able to live a normal life when luck goes against you in the worst way possible, so much bad still happens that I think a more appropriate message would be "Never give up" instead of "Never lose hope". While these seem very similar, I think the main difference is that while some would just give in to the Sister's mistreatment of them and hope for a better life one day, Andy fights back and eventually wins against the Sisters, showing that if you keep working hard at it you can overcome.
But overall, I'd say yeah, Andy is a pretty cool guy.
Anthony is right in his interpretation of what I said. I wasn't making that connection, Alex. He isn't full of himself because he's trying to do what he would have done anyway. Going back to his past occupation, Andy was a banker. In jail, he's doing things that a banker would do because he is a banker. He requests all that stuff for rocks because that was one of his interests. Andy is not full of himself because he is only trying to be like he would outside of prison. Outside of prison, he wouldn't interact with many of the convicts he is forced to inside of the prison, so he keeps to himself.
ReplyDeleteGoing back to what Alex and Anthony remarked about what section the book is in, it's not just hope. It's "Hope Springs Eternal". The message is that hope is always there, waiting to pop up and grow. Andy's arrival itself triggers hope beginning to grow. As Alex mentioned with all of Andy's accomplishments, the prisoners can actually hope to become something outside of prison. Without Andy, none of that would have happened. The library would have still been dismal because there was nobody there who would work hard enough to fill it with books and the sisters wouldn't have disbanded. Without Andy, the source of hope for the Shawkshank prisoners, the prison would be a terrible place, unworthy of redemption. See what I did there? Andy was the cause of the Shawkshank redemption.
In other words, yeah, Andy is a pretty cool guy.
Ok so basically so far everyone thinks that Andy is in no way full of himself except for me, but just try to hear me out. Yes I agree that Andy is different than most of the prisoners at Shawshank and that he is portraying that in the way that he conducts himself. But I think that in order for Andy to have hope, he needs to have a little bit of a superiority complex. Think about it. Andy is surrounded by a lot of people that most would call "the scum of the earth" for example, men who kill children and guys who rape and murder women. If Andy didn't think that he could somehow rise above some of the awful people that he has been grouped with, he wouldn't have any hope for the future.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I have to add, I don't think "full of himself" is the right phrase. I think he is more of a leader in his enviroment. He doesn't just think he is the best, and therefore is only in it for himself. He realizes that he is one of the more intelligent people in Shawshank, and he uses it to help out his fellow prisoners.
So Andy is a cool guy.
I think Dan's last comment sums up a lot about Andy. Andy did have a lot of hope in his and gave it to others, and his feeling of superiority had to do with that. I think everyone knows that feeling superior to someone, the fact that you can do something that someone else can, makes you feel a lot better about yourself. Also the fact that he is (supposedly) innocent, makes him feel seperated from most of the low-lifes of the prison.
ReplyDeleteAlso, it was not his strength that got him his reputation. He is intellegent, as Dan said, and he had the back of the whole administration. Nobody could touch him. That had to give him a feeling of superiority against everyone. And people look up to him, envying his place in the "society".
And I think Andy sounds like a cool guy, too.
I think Anthony is a bit mixed up on the idea of hope. Hoping for things and having hope are, in actuality, two separate concepts. Anybody can hope for something good - who wouldn't? Sure Andy wishes to get out of prison - that desire is held by everybody (barring consideration of the dependency effect Shawshank has on characters such as Brooks... but that's a topic for another time). Actually having hope is a more special quality, which is why Andy is such an exceptional character, mentality-wise. Having hope means much more than wishing for things to be better: it is taking initiative, being confident in achieving your goals, never giving up on your ambitions. For this reason, Andy is definitely a hopeful character. Anthony's point that Andy "never gives up" is completely true; however, that does not have to conflict with the idea of Andy being hopeful. Refusal to give up is an essential part of being hopeful. Andy is a hopeful person who knows that he will make it out of Shawshank, and on his journey towards this goal, he doggedly perseveres through all the struggles he encounters and maintains these beliefs until the end.
ReplyDeleteIn short: Andy is a pretty cool guy, he breaks out of prison and doesn't afraid of anything.
I was reading and noticed something very interesting, which was that right after Andy escapes from prison and the three months after this took place, Warden Norton "lost the spring in his step" and retired from the prison angry and unhappy. I saw the word 'spring' and it immediately made me think of how Alex thought that the ShawShank Redemption was about hope, and how this was also the Spring season story from the entire book. This made my train of thought continue, and I'm interested in what you guys think about this too, but it doesn't seem to make any sense to say that Norton lost his hope when Andy escaped him. A more fitting word would be his power or his control, and yet this doesn't seem to go along with the theme of Hope and Spring. Maybe I'm over thinking that but oh well.
ReplyDeleteOn a second note, Dan's rewording of "full of himself" to "a leader" seems to be another way of Dan saying "I was wrong, but I'm going to pretend like I knew what I was talking about". I don't think that you can fairly change the phrasing of being full of oneself to being a leader, because as Dan mentioned, Andy helped other people through his good personality and his helping-hand, and while this can be seen as leadership, it also has nothing to do with him thinking that he is better than anyone else. Andy takes pride in the fact that he helped dozens of men pass their high school equivalency tests, and also, when Norton threatens Andy and uses the library against him, it is evident that people realize how much it means to Andy that even in a place as awful as ShawShank he is helping others out. To say that Andy is a leader, yes, I can agree with that, but that is completely different from being full of yourself and the attempt of a connection between the two that Dan made is nonexistent.
Sorry Dan.
Yeah... so overall I really loved the book guys I think we should keep Stephen King and definitely finish all four seasons. Don't forget to respond to my question about the spring in Norton's step.
As a summary here, Andy is a pretty cool guy, doesn't afraid of anything, and all in all I am not disappoint with this book.