The Significance of Courage and Hope

           Courage and hope play an important part in everyone’s lives. No matters of what you do or what you have been involved in, chances are that we might have had a courageous or hopeful moment in our lives. If it was not for courage, lots of ground-breaking or important events may have not happened in life, like Martin Luther King’s speeches or the French and American Revolution. Courage is important in or lives along with the hope that people can succeed in what they are doing, but sometimes people will have to do courageous things in their lives whether they will like it or not. D-Day for example, the first major offensive that the allies performed during the Second World War against German occupied France. The reason of why I am talking about this major event in history is because what the allies did toke lots of courage and hope since the area were they landed in was highly undefended and over a thousands of them died within an hour. If it was not for this event in history, France may still be under German control to this day.

         Other examples of courage and hope may be found in some of the texts that I have studied in class. One of my favorite texts in particular is a story written by Steven King and directed into a movie by Frank Darabont. The text that I am talking about is The Shawshank Redemption. In this text, a man by the name of Andy Dufrense is locked up in the Shawshank for a crime that he did not commit. He was sentenced only by pure suspicion and lacked the evidence that would have set him free. During his time at that prison, he needed to use courage and hope in order to survive his ordeal. Some examples of the ordeals that he faced were the sisters, the corrupted guard Hadley, and the warden of the prison Warden Norton. The sisters, they were a group of prisoners who tried to seek dominance over some of the new and vulnerable prisoners that arrived, much like Andy. The corrupted gurad Hadley that I metioned was a notorious man who lacked any means of common decency and is depraved of any moral values and standards towards the prisoners. And the last person is Warden Norton; this man I believe is the reason of why Andy Dufrense choose to escape form the prison. Norton was a very religious man who tried to act like the “god” of the prison that he ran. Up until Andy received actual evidence of his innocence later on in the movie, Norton locked up Andy in solitary confinement and killed the man that carried the evidence of his innocence. From this point on, Andy’s only motivations were on escaping the prison. His motivations were best described in a couple of quotes that he told his fellow prisoner Red. His quotes were “You can either get busy living or get busy dying.” And “Hope is a good thing.” His two quotes can best be explained by the situation that the prisoners faced in the prison. Starting with the first one, this quote was behind Andy’s motivation on escape and later motivates Red to break his parole. His quote has some truth behind it since some people choose to give up in a time of despair instead of acting courageously and facing the situation. The other quote were Andy tells Red that hope is a good thing is in response to red saying that hope is bad. Reds reason behind his view on hope will probably have to come from his experience of never getting out of the prison through a constant denial of his parole.

But the way I see it, hope is a good thing and so is courage because without them, no one will ever accomplish any in their lives, just like Andy Dufrense escaping out of prison and the historical events that have taken place in life.

-Jerry Liniweski