Don't lose yourself

When people watch the movie, they are usually amazed at Andy Dufresne's courage to turn a classic music from the guard's office and keep the guards from coming in, or his intelligence that eventually made him an owner of a big library and a respected financial adviser. How is that possible? How could a person, locked in a confined environment full of violence, loneliness, and fear, stay so calm and happy? I think Shawshank was different because he had succeeded in keeping his identity.

A prison is the most unlikely place that an identity of a person could be maintained. Every prisoner lives in an identical cell and follows an identical schedule. They are no longer called by their names; they are assigned numbers. Of course, humans want to feel different and special all the time, and thus the prisoners in the movie try to establish their identity within the place. Sometimes a prisoner may try to win over others, like the one who tried to rape Andy. Sometimes a prisoner tries to make a friend, just like the one who had a pet bird. Sometimes a prisoner can't bear the struggle to establish a new one, and instead shouts a desperate cry, "I don't belong here!"

Most of the struggles fail, as the prisoners just can't distinguish one from others who wear the same, eat the same, and live the same. But Andy Dufresne remains so special - he is always special and he always inspires others. How was this possible? Just because he was exceptionally intelligent or bold? Those qualities would have contributed to Andy's difference, but the underlying is premise is that Andy succeeded in establishing a strong identity of his own: the only prisoner who is actually trying to escape the cell.

I don't think Andy would have lost his unique qualities if the process of digging a hole took much more: it is the process itself that made Andy special. The feeling that he is doing things that others would never think of. The feeling that he is not living his life in vain, but rather digging and digging every day for freedom. These are why Andy was able to spare his sleep and dig a hole every night for several years.

I also faced an identity crisis when I came to KMLA. It was not much of an identical life pattern that made me suffer. On the contrary, it was overwhelming freedom to choose that confined me. I didn't know what to do, and I felt like I was a silent, invisible being. What helped me go through that confusion was a simple act of throwing baseballs, just like Andy's repetitive digging. Though playing baseball didn't raise my GPAs or made me confident, at least it made my life feel special, and I could live with it. Having a unique identity was more important than I thought.

On Sanity, Silence, and Korean Red Craze

According to Chief Bromden's description, the ward doesn't seem at all like the place for the insane. Chief Bromden's mental state clearly proves against the ward peoples' accusations of insanity. Like Red in The Shawshank Redemption, a narrator could sometimes be unreliable, since he or she could reflect personal, sometimes biased, thoughts on his or her narration. But does subjectivity mean insanity? Chief Bromden's voice is certainly that of a normal person, though he might inaccurately depict the ward as a prison rather than a hospital. In fact, he is more than normal, if decades of being in a confined environment with mentally disordered didn't make him crazy.

Then why is Bromden pretending to be deaf and dumb throughout the story? I believe it is because silence is sometimes the best way to reveal the darkest aspects of human beings, and eventually to survive from them. Would the black boys have harassed him so much, if Bromden was able to accuse them? Would he have kept away from any problems for so long, if he wasn't staying quiet? I remember watching an American movie "Quiet," which definitely shows the power of silence. It is Dot, the main character who pretends to be deaf and dumb, that faces the hidden evil of human beings(because people think she can't hear or speak), contemplate deeply on it, and eventually breaks the cycle either by speaking out loud, or by murdering a pervert father. I haven't finished the book, but Bromden's huge body as a symbol implies that Bromden's silence will not merely remain as a sign of subordination. He has power because he is silent.

So I believe that this book is not an accurate description of a real ward for the mentally diseased, but an effective tool to criticize how people so easily create prejudices and isolate the minority. To me, the black boys who seem to really enjoy the violence itself, and the Big Nurse who is obsessed about artificial order, look more insane. At this point, accusations for insanity is not the matter of prescribing illness, but effective tools for power struggles. The story reminds me of South Korea's situation in the 1970s and 1980s. For people who supported Japan's colonization of Korea, Korea's liberation was a drastic fall from their wealthy and powerful status. Now they had to face accusations of "being traitors." In order to survive from hostilities, they needed to set new enemies - not pro-Japanese collaborators, but Communists. Sudden outbreak of the Korean War saved them, since they were no longer traitors, but the most vigorous leaders of anti-Communist movement. Anyone who had leftist thoughts or were somehow related to leftist organizations were simply termed as "the Red." They weren't even treated as mad people. They simply couldn't exist in South Korea.

I think silence, again, was the only possible way to survive the fever. But that doesn't mean that these silence would last forever. Just like McMurphy boldly declared how he cannot be insane, Koreans with leftist philosophy are beginning to express their thoughts in an increasingly democratized society. North Korean Communism is definitely a wrong, inhumane ideology. But I wish that South Korean public can be more tolerable to the "McMurphys" who boldly express their "insane" philosophies. This world is not a ward, and we are not Big Nurses.