Remember that poster of The Shawshank Redemption? The protagonist Andy stretches his body and looks up at the sky, giving people a texture of escaping and about to run to freedom.
What allows a person who has been in prison for 19 years to escape from prison?
The principle of reciprocity in psychology should be the basis for all conditions for achieving success.
What people have given me, we should try to reciprocate. Reciprocity comes with a sense of debt servicing.
Cultural anthropologists Tiger and Fox believe that this "debt net" is a unique adaptation mechanism of human beings, with which humans can achieve the division of labor, so that individuals can interdependence and condense into efficiency units.
For Andy, he wanted to escape from prison in a long-term plan in his mind, and how to implement it depended on his own choice.
Choosing to be close to others, to contact feelings, and to take the opportunity to confuse the prison police, it is necessary to adopt the principle of reciprocity in order to enhance the emotional connection with the prisonmates, with the prison police and even the prison director, and in exchange for a favorable side.
1. Exchange cigarettes for hammers and celebrity posters to establish emotional connections among inmates
Young banker Andy was charged with murdering his wife and her lover and was imprisoned in Shawshank Prison.
Andy, who had been silent for three months, approached Red first because he saw Red's influence, and he was always surrounded by a small group. And he also accurately judged the safety of communication with Red, who was not good at words but had a way to get what he wanted— the hammer.
He exchanged cigarettes for hammers, and while the people in Shawshank Prison were obsessed with movies and stars, Andy used the time to get star posters from Red, and the escape plan in his head had matured, and he changed the posters on the wall three times in a row.
For 19 years, every time he let out the wind, he would put the excavated wall soil into his pants pocket and quietly bring it to the playground.
Later, during a police search, the black hole was found behind posters in his cell room. By this time, Andy was already flying away.
If it were not for the long-term emotional accumulation established by the principle of reciprocity, the few people close to him may have betrayed him for their own interests under the pressure of the police, of course, they did not know Andy's long-term plan, so only Red, who was closest to Andy, got the opportunity to be with him, and the two people who had experienced psychological trauma huddled together to keep warm.
2. Fill out a tax evasion form for the captain of the prison guard and win a cool summer beer for the inmates
Captain Hadley has an inheritance but is struggling to pay taxes and can't get it all, Andy asks him if he believes his wife, Hadley is furious and wants to push Andy off the roof, Andy is not afraid, he says he has a way to get the captain the thirty-five thousand dollars, in exchange for three bottles of beer each for his "colleagues".
On a hot summer day, several people drank cool beers and were grateful to Andy. One of them greeted him and invited him to a beer, and Andy was always thinking about the escape plan in his head.
Because of the reciprocity, Andy not only has an influence among the prison guards, but also won the overall favor of the small group. The small group thus invisibly began to cater to his plans, obeyed his ideas, and began to enjoy the beautiful atmosphere that Andy won.
3. Exchange the relative freedom of money for the prison warden Norton to do what he wants to do
Andy managed to gain the attention of the prison hierarchy. Many prison guards came to Andy for tax and other banking issues.
These include Norton, the highest prison chief. At first, he did not ask Andy to help him directly, but went to Andy's cell on the pretext of rounding the room, Andy deliberately put the Bible at the head of the bed to attract the attention of the warden Norton, the two exchanged, and Andy answered Norton's temptation with a good understanding of the Bible.
So Andy laundered the money for the selfish and greedy warden Norton, in exchange for a little convenience and free access.
In order to facilitate the handling of affairs, Andy no longer works, but is arranged to go to the library managed by Lao Bu to become Lao Bu's assistant.
He wrote to state legislators for six consecutive years, asking for the expansion of the prison library and some books, and finally received $200 in funding.
Andy helped the captain of the guard, and the three sisters who had been harassing him were maimed by the captain of the guard, and from then on, no one dared to bully Andy.
Andy used the principle of reciprocity to win relatively free space and time, the prison guards no longer look for stubble, but also cleaned up the three sisters for him, although Norton was extremely harsh on him, every time he made a good account, he asked him to shine his shoes, but after the last accounting, Andy escaped from Shawshank Prison wearing the black shoes of the warden Norton, took away the $370,000 that Norton embezzled, and Norton also shot himself because of the investigation.
4. Listening to records behind closed doors, although punished by three months of confinement, ushered in a change in Shawshank Prison
Andy found a record while cleaning up the library, he shut the guards out of the door, sat leisurely in a chair and listened to the Italian opera "The Marriage of Figaro", and when the song of the soul was played on the radio, it resounded through the night, and all the prisoners in Shawshank Prison held their heads high, and their hearts were released as never before.
The subtext of the film goes like this: It is so beautiful that you are heartbroken, and I can only tell you that the sound goes straight into the sky, higher and farther than anyone in this gray corner can dream, like a beautiful bird flying into our boring cage, and the high wall disappears into invisibility, that is, at that moment, every person who is locked up in Shawshank touches freedom.
The sound of nature can purify people's souls and fill the lifeless Shawshank with a lively atmosphere, which is what Andy brought to them, and it is for this reason that Andy was punished with a month of confinement. But in exchange for the sense of tacit understanding of his fellow prisoners, it was totally worth it.
There are many reciprocal plots in "The Shawshank Redemption", and for Andy, who has wisdom, knowledge, and is penniless, perhaps only the use of the principle of reciprocity will open the emotional connection between him and his fellow inmates, so that others will have a guilty debt repayment, automatically providing him with convenient and relaxed space to confuse the prison guards and the prison warden, and lay a stable and solid foundation for his successful escape.
Emerson said that every debt had to be cleaned, as if God and his old man were creditors.
The principle of reciprocity is actually a mature system of courtesy exchanges, which may be a unique feature of human culture, and it is precisely because of the reciprocal system that human beings have become human beings.
After relegating to the principle of reciprocity, Red follows Andy's instructions and finds Andy's legacy under the tree.
"Shawshank Redemption" is adapted from the famous American novelist Stephen King's "Four Seasons of Strange Tam", which is currently ranked first in the evaluation list of Douban and IMDB, and is known as the most classic work in more than 20 years.
The protagonist Andy has experienced 19 years of psychological redemption from being accused of being imprisoned to learning the truth in prison, and then successfully escaping.
In our hearts, there is a place that cannot be locked, and that place is called hope.
Because of his hope, Andy has always endured silently in his heart, endured the humiliation of the three sisters, endured the exploitation and threats of the prison guards and the prison director, and only for the long-term plan of the future in his heart.
Some birds can't be kept in cages, their feathers are so beautiful that when they fly away, you think it's a sin to keep them up.
Andy is versatile, likes music, likes to read, likes to carve, has thoughts and insights, and has an indomitable and kind soul, such a person who has been wrongfully imprisoned is actually an indictment of an unfair social system, and the success of the film's arrangement of his escape plan is also to cater to people's desires and needs that must be complained about.
Andy was unjustly imprisoned, and was able to escape for nineteen years in the case of a fait accompli, can not help but say that he has a strong inner world, and what supports him and allows him to see the hope of fait accompli is not the result of the principle of step-by-step reciprocity?
How a person does and does what is actually a choice, Andy did not choose to go along with Norton, become a money-making machine, and did not choose to continue to be wronged, but chose to flee in the case of hopelessness, which is his third choice, even if he is anonymous in the future, but the soul is free.
At the end of the film, when Red meets Andy in a small town on the Taiping Coast, it moves countless people.