Shawshank Paper

Tori Smiley “You know the funny thing is, on the outside I was an honest man, straight as an arrow. I had to come to prison to be a crook.” Following societies rules always proved to be a main concern of Andy’s. Although as Andy continued to live his life in prison, the rules were no longer one of his main concerns. As the audience watches Andy change, it becomes easy to compare these changes to some of Kohlberg’s moral stages. The moral stages help explain the development of moral reasoning in people. Andy’s changes can be found in Stage One: Avoiding Punishment, Stage Three: Pleasing Others and Stage Five: Rights of Others. Kohlberg defined Stage One as the people who break the rules, while also avoiding punishment. Andy shows this stage of morality when he devises the plan to create the hole in the wall. His starting point involved asking Red to get him a rock hammer and a poster of a girl. Without fully understanding why Andy wanted these items, Red complied. Andy planned to use the rock hammer to create a hole in the wall, and the poster would hide the hole. He knew he needed to keep the hole hidden, had he been caught he would have been beaten or killed. Andy’s behavior demonstrates Stage One perfectly because he worked for the reward while making sure to avoid punishment. Luckily Andy moved up the stages of morality as he continued to live in the prison. He then came to an abrupt stop at Stage Three, where he helped others in order to gain social approval. Reconstructing the prison library instantly became a concern of Andy’s, he wrote letters weekly to the state government in order to receive the necessary funds. Andy used the library as his way to educate his fellow inmates; he helped give them the education that they never received. Doing this helped cause him to become popular among his peers, therefore he gained social approval. Not only did he educate his peers he also did taxes for all of the guards and the warden. Choosing to do this job luckily caused the guards’ opinions of him to improve immensely. Andy knew exactly what to do in order gain approval among his peers. Andy made his final stop in prison a successful one, ending at Stage Five. Kohlberg described this stage as the rights of others,

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