3 Personally LIfe-affirming Quotes from "The Shawshank Redemption"

“Get busy Living or Get Busy Dying”



Get Busy Living or Get Busy Dying, That's Goddamn Right from Shawshank Redemption.

Lyrical by aesthetic, poetic in its simplicity, and powerful because of both, “Get busy living or get busy dying” feels like something that would fit snugly in the smarmy self congratulating mouths of certain gurus of the day . Morgan Freeman's delivery of the line demonstrates the veracity of the saying “It’s not what you say it’s how you say it, and why he's one of the greatest of his generation. His command over his voice implies strength in pliability. It's not a gravelly subwoofer barking out his consonants, and raising his vowels as if trying to command them from death (Tony Robbins I’m looking at you). It’s softer, more as if he is trying to lull his E’s to sleep, with the G nearly falling asleep from being in proximity. He doesn’t state it like so many guru’s as if he’s reading his own plan for one of the greatest heists ever, and he doesn’t necessarily throw it away either. He simply seems to say the words, following the advice of the great Katherine Hepburn to Anthony Hopkins on the set of “The Lion in Winter” …

This segment was aired on the Turner Classic Movies channel. It's Anthony Hopkins' tribute to Katharine Hepburn. The first ten seconds are missing though.

“Don’t act just speak the lines”. Seems like the perfect summation of what makes Morgan’s performance as “Red” in the film so deeply affecting. His words are not affected or even infected with acting. They are simply understood, and spoken in a way that only Morgan could understand and speak them. So that what they are infected with is Morgans lyrical quality. His every-maness which follows in the vein of those before him like Jimmy Stewart, or has as its peer in someone like Tom Hanks. Freeman over his career has had a pinpoint accuracy for finding the barest of truths in a word or a line, and The Shawshank is near or at the top of the list of films where he does so with uncanny consistency. “Get Busy living, or get busy dying”. It is has both the quality of prose, and poetry, of something that implies both closure and finality, and of something more open to interpretation. In my last apartment I was given to posting 3 x 5 index cards with quotes over my walls, doors, and cabinetry. I wanted my apartment to speak to me, to chatter, to whisper in my ear at night those words I felt I needed to hear to become or remain the person I wanted to be in life. This quote from the film was one of only two quotes that wasn’t from a teacher, a friend, a philosopher, or a book (none of which Im proud to say came from that disreputable discipline known as self help). Its power is in understatement. If it’s said with this kind of dramatic implication, or in a way that addresses its power in any way it loses it, like a magical friend that only appears as long as attention is not drawn to it. It is one of the few statements that though drenched in absoluteness, feels applicable to anyone and to everyone without bias. The “living” or the “dying” are left to interpretation. The word that precedes them is busy, and though it clearly implies working at, or through, or on, or all of the above - it too opens itself up to the personal, but you are either doing one, or you are doing the other. There are many cases in my life where either/or doesn’t work for me. Either/Or is simplification, and it’s a kind of power grab, but I wrench my power in life from understanding I am not in ownership or possession of a great deal of things, but my life, and how I choose to frame it, how I choose to see it, is one of those that qualifies as either or. You are either going about the business of living, and especially for oneself, connected to others but through the self , or you are going about the business of dying for oneself, or for others with no connection, or too much connection, slow, or fast, but it is one or the other. That like so much of what comprises absolutism is the power ( and in many cases, but not this one, the weakness) of it… simplicity..”That’s Goddamn right”.

“How Can You Be So Obtuse”

Andy Dufresne, a successful banker, is arrested for the murders of his wife and her lover, and is sentenced to life imprisonment at the Shawshank prison. He becomes the most unconventional prisoner.

I’ve always found myself attracted to anger in film. Anger pretty much in all it’s forms, but indignant , and righteous anger the most. It’s the driving force of attraction in a lot of my favorite scenes and lines from movies. That could be because there is a lot of anger inside me, pent up, unaddressed, unencouraged, but I tend to think it’s not so much the amount as the quality of the anger. When I was a kid, maybe in the seventh grade, I had a geography teacher who couldn’t be bothered to teach. The kind that just hands out cumbersome long form reading assignments from the book while he plops his well worn loafers on top of the desk and commits himself to crossword puzzles, and flirting with the World History teacher next door over a cigarette. I was on the way to school to which there was no bus, because of a racist zoning system which quite skillfully zoned it so every single one of the very few black kids on my block were sent to the very black and latino school in San Bernardino, rather than the white one right around the corner, so my mother had to drive me. The car (a beat up datsun I believe) broke down on the way, and I ended up missing one class and being late for this one. When I arrived, his loafers seemed to spot me from their perch on top of the desk before he did, as they sort of perked up, and then rose from their stationary position as the protectors of the crossword in front of the paper. As his finger motioned me over to his desk, I felt positive I would have no issue here, because obviously what happened could not be helped, and I had the school equivalent of diplomatic immunity by way of a note from my mother. Turns out neither mattered to this, burned out cross between Hitler, and Kevin Nealon. Upon hearing my story of trail and tribulation just trying to make it to a school I shouldn’t have had to make the Indiana Jones map trip to in the first place, he merely raised an eyebrow, and uttered the words “Yeah, you just have to get to school on time, so Im going to have to write you up, and any continuance of this behavior will affect your grade”. A little shook at the word “behavior” I replied, that though I understood that timeliness was important (Obviously, not but a few days before he had read my name off on the perfect attendance list) there was no way I could’ve prevented this. To which he replied in exactly the same tone, with exactly the same facial expression, exactly the same words. The whole thing reminded me of John Malkovich repeatedly stating “It’s beyond my control” in Dangerous Liasons, except that at least had feelings attached despite its blatant cruelty. This was much more like the warden in scene above, bereft of any feeling, any empathy, sympathy, or understanding. My incident wasn’t anywhere near the vicinity of the stakes at play in this scene, but as an adult I seemed to have more run ins with this exact kind of callous indifference to actual circumstance and facts than I ever would’ve cared to have had (especially during my tenure in the military) or even on the phone with bill collectors, or to slumlords in Los Angeles. People who who either by design or by default couldn’t be bothered to in the words of the great Otis Redding try a little tenderness. People who willfully seemed to block out the obvious, to state a rigidly preposterous position due to either unyielding belief in a system, or a desire to hurt. My anger in those times was much like what Tim Robbins so acutely depicted (It may be my favorite bit of acting by Robbins in the role I felt should’ve gotten him an Oscar). Righteous anger, not hateful anger, anger confused and obstructed by a face on the other side that seems either pure in its ignorance, or defiant and destitute of humanity. Andy/Robbins barely raises his voice in this scene until he is dragged away by guards, and even then its more akin to pleading disbelief, and to makes sure he’s being heard, than it is pure unadulterated anger. And I understand it, I identify with it in a way that goes beyond both sympathy and empathy. The words “How can you be so obtuse” attach themselves to, and affirm my flesh, they infiltrate and affirm my spirit, they embody and affirm my pain. When Timothy Robbins/ Andy Dufresne utter those words, I just….get it.

“Andy Dufresne, who crawled through a river of shit, and came out clean on the other side”

"Andy Dufresne, who crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side. Andy Dufresne, headed for the Pacific. Those of us who knew him best talk about him often. I swear the stuff he pulled. Sometimes it makes me sad, though, Andy being gone.

I could pick any number of words, or sentences from this entire section of the film. Its a small, but profoundly well crafted bit of dialogue, that expertly moves the story along in time, while keeping the integrity of the themes and values at play, and its gorgeously written. “I just miss my friend” chokes me up just thinking about it. It’s so achingly relatable to anybody who has ever lost a really great friend to time, space, or death, and its delivered by Freeman with devastating poignancy, and the same plainness aforementioned. But it’s “Andy Dufresne, who crawled through a river of shit, and came out clean on the other side” that personifies the ultimate message of this film so precisely. Hope…hope that any of us, maybe even all of us, can make it through the yards and yards of muck, grime, and fecal matter life, society leaves behind. That we can survive years in the dark, dragging ourselves up and out of horrible family trauma, poverty, crushingly inept leadership, lack of upward mobility at work, social inequality, and hatred, and come through it all clean, liberated, and possibly stronger. Hope that we can make it through our own shit, ego, entitlement, self degradation, or depreciation, self pity, over compensation, and analyzation, and on and on. In the film the words urgently calls you back to remind you of everything you’ve seen on screen, and off screen. Of all the inhumanity that Andy has had to endure without aide of a montage, so that as you see Andy now in his car , wind blowing through his hair, the same silly smile on his face as was on it when he scored beer for all the men on the roof detail, (another impossibly well written scene and moment) it reminds you that of the power of his resolve, and that he did it all with his humanity in tact. It reminds me that I can do the same. I shouldn’t have to , but nonetheless I can. It’s about endurance. Not the kind that makes you an inactive spectator in your own life, waiting on your piece of “pie in the sky” as Malcolm X would so often allude to. But the active kind. The kind that allows you to endure while you act. Andy had a plan, and he worked at it, and he adapted, and he endured, and he never gave up hope to cynicism, and pessimism. Yeah.. “Andy Dufesne, who crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side”.