#9. Reading Journal: Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption

Ye Ji Park / 111053 / 6

Mr.Garrioch

English Composition

November 5 2011

 

Reading Journal: Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption

 

“It's hard to win, easy to lose

We play a game we cannot choose

As steady as a rocking horse, as subtle as a bruise.”

This is an excerpt from Oi Va Voi's song titled "Waiting", which Mr. Moon gave us as a free essay topic. And I questioned myself; what is the “hard to win, easy to lose” game that I am playing? In Mr. Moon’s class, there was time constraint (25 minutes) and I wrote anything that came to my mind first. But later, as I read Stephen King’s Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, I was able to find my answer to the question.

One major motif in the novella is institutionalization. Red tells the prison walls are funny; “first you hate them, then you get used to them. And enough time passes, you get so used you depend on.” Prison life is scheduled, predictable, and monotonous; prisoners detest repetitious days of the prison, but actually, they are tamed to the repetitious and unchanging prison life. And once they get parole—permission to leave the prison—they hesitate and feel fear of entering the society. Brooks, in the story, was an important man in Shawshank; he was an educated librarian. However, back to society, he’s nothing but useless ex-con suffering from neuralgia. He, failed to adjust the society, ended up committing suicide. Even Andy dithered over breakout; Red explains the reason Andy did not escape right after finishing to dig the hole is that maybe Andy got scared, to leave from convenient prison life that “you are told when to eat, when you can write letters, when you can smoke”. Despite the institutional syndrome, Andy at last decided to escape, and he achieved freedom. Freedom to do something you want to do, not something the warder demands to do.

(Brooks, desiring to return Shawshank)

(Brooks committing suicide)

KMLA is similar to Shawshank. Students are accustomed to the repetitious schedule—morning exercise, advisor time, classes, self-study period, Honjung, bedtime—and tremendous workload of quizzes, presentations, midterm, final term, etc. I, institutionalized to KMLA, am busy every day to finish the homework which deadline is the very day.

But if I continue to do nothing more than works school gives, I would never be able to break out from institutional syndrome. I would not search about what I want to do; no effort to find my area of concern, or to participate in interesting activities. Only if I find extra time between school schedules, and use it to achieve something I want, I would be Andy who escaped from the institutionalized prison and achieved freedom. Remind Oi Va Voi’s lyrics; the “hard to win, easy to lose” game I’m playing is time management.

KMLA is not Shawshank itself; rather, it is an egg containing both Shawshank and Zihuatanejo. I, nine months ago, entered this egg; and right now, I’m floundering in the “Shawshank yolk”. To swim out of yolk—managing time effectively—is hard game to play. Still, once I succeed to thrust temptation of being institutionalized and satisfying at given schedule away, I would reach “Zihuatanejo albumen”. The place that I can care about my own activity and prepare my own soaring, like Andy did in Zihuatanejo.