Andy Dufrain

Have you heard the story of Andy Dufrain (actually spelled Dufresne)? If you've watched The Shawshank Redemption you'd know. But since we're all busy watching Harry Potter or the Transformers, I'd like to tell Andy Dufrain's story. (Warning: Given below is the plot of the movie. Spoiler Alert...)

Dufrain is a banker, whose convicted of murdering his wife and her lover. Due to circumstantial evidence, he is convicted and sent to prison for two life sentences. There he meets Ellis Red Redding. The movie shows Andy's experiences at the prison, but one thing note worthy, is the fact that Andy asks Ellis Red Redding to smuggle in a rock hammer and a poster of a movie actress.

As the story progresses, we come to find out that Andy Dufrain was actually innocent, and wrongly convicted of murder. Then, 17 years after he first entered prison, Andy Dufrain is missing from his prison cell. The furious prison warden discovers how Andy escaped.

Through a tunnel in his prison wall....

Andy Dufrain spent about 17 years chipping away at his wall, late at night after the prison lights were switched off. He used to take all the concrete that he chipped away, put them in his pocket, and emptied them in the prison yard every morning. Andy Dufrain was an innocent man. He was finally free.

After 17 years. 17 long years. Every day during those 17 years, Andy chipped away using nothing but a small rock hammer(the size of a slightly large toothbrush).

There's a line which Andy says to Ellis Red Redding in the movie. The line is: "Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies".

Hope. Something most of us lose within a week, or a month. We try dieting for three weeks and then decide its easier to just remain fat. We try to score better marks and after the first four report cards, decide we're maybe not smart enough after all. We try being friends with someone we really like, and then drop it after the first few tries. Worse still, we try getting back together with our estranged friends, and leave it after the first few no's.

Sometimes it does seem futile to hope. Sometimes you might hear them say, 'Give up Dude', 'It's no use', or a personal favourite of some, 'Get a life!'. Well, when Andy Dufrain asked Ellis Red Redding for a rock hammer, Ellis jokingly asked him if he was planning on tunneling his way out of prison. "It would take you 600 years to do that!" Ellis said, to imply how impossible the task really was.

He was wrong. Andy Dufrain took less than 20....


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