‘Tout s’en va, tout passe, l’eau coule, et le coeur oublie.’ This is one of the short sentences written in the page right before the one where ‘Hope Springs Eternal’ starts. Written by Flaubert, one of the greatest French writers, it means everything goes away, everything passes by, water flows and the heart forgets. After translating the meaning of this sentence in my head, I started to wonder. “Does this sentence have any relation with the novella ‘Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption’?” I considered the flow of the whole story, which is basically about innocent Andy jailbraking from Shawshank, a prison notorious for its rigorousness. Then, I found out that the clause ‘Tout s’en va, tout passe’ has a thread of connection with the story; since a liberal translation means everything passes and goes well in the end, it makes sense regarding how Andy successfully managed to jailbreak in the story. ‘L’eau coule’, which means water flows, is a poetic clause which also has a same meaning. Then what about ‘Le coeur oublie’? I guess after something goes well, it is later forgotten by people, even though it seemed so important at such moment.
Solving such a puzzle was quite interesting, but more than that, we need to think what made Andy’s jailbreaking successful and eventually made everything go well. I definitely believe that the answer lies on 'hope'. As it can be noticed from the title ‘hope springs eternal’, the main theme emphasized in this story is having hope. Although it somewhat seemed impossible to escape from such a notorious jail filled with criminals who have previously committed heinous crimes, Andy never lose hope of jailbreaking. If Andy did not have any hope, he would do nothing to escape from Shawshank. Especially from the scene where Andy digged the prison wall by a hammer in order to make an exit, we can definitely feel that Andy had a strong conviction that he would, one day, get out of the prison and rest peacefully under the sunshine of the Pacific ocean.
The importance of hope is also reflected well in the Movie ‘Shawshank Redemption’. However, several differences exist, which I think emphasised the importance of hope and dramatised the whole story. First of all, there were three wardens in the book, whereas in the movie, Norton is the only warden. Norton, in the movie, becomes much more devil-like, even killing Tommy. While Norton is depicted as an evil character, Tommy is more naïve and hard-working compared to how he is depicted in the original story. He studies hard and finally passed the test, but gets assassinated by Norton. These changes-making Norton more evil and changing Tommy into more innocent character-make story more dramatic, thereby making the plot more emotionally moving. In fact the main theme about the importance of not losing hope is indeed emphasised, regarding that Norton’s more devil-likeness means harsher prison environment. Plus there were some events that books cannot easily deliver; one of them is Andy turning off the music ‘Figarro’s Marriage’ without getting any permission. In the book, it would be hard to deliver such event effectively.
Personally, I prefer watching movie, since it moved my emotion a lot, compared to what I felt after reading the original novella. Especially, watching Andy meeting Red in the coast of the Pacific Ocean gave me such a strong emotional feeling. However, I still believe the book and the movie has its own advantages, so both of them are great!
Good journal response, but it is very late. I like the effort you put into it, as the length and detail reflects a thorough bit of examination. However, we are now reading The Body, and I'd rather see a shorter one about Shawshank and a shorter one about The Body than this - which, again, is late. I think you're going to have to learn to be more efficient using your time as a writer. Maybe you are a bit too meticulous and over-thinking some of your less important assignments. You have things that are in various stages of completion and - while the work is good - it is hard to give a good score for something that isn't finished.
답글삭제Come on Seungmo! You can deliver the goods!:) Just get writing.