Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.Red had come to fear hope itself. More evidence of this is found as Andy explained to Red why he was glad he had played Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro."
Andy Dufresne: That's the beauty of music. They can't get that from you... Haven't you ever felt that way about music?When Andy "flew the coop," he left behind a note for his friend. It was this note that caused Red to choose the compass over the gun later on--to choose to live and conquer his fear. Andy Dufresne wrote his friend:
Red: I played a mean harmonica as a younger man. Lost interest in it though. Didn't make much sense in here
Andy Dufresne: Here's where it makes the most sense. You need it so you don't forget.
Red: Forget?
Andy Dufresne: Forget that... there are places in this world that aren't made out of stone, and that there's something inside that they can't get to ,and that they can't touch. It's yours.
Red: What're you talking about?
Andy Dufresne: Hope.
"...hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies."Idealistic of him to say that no good thing ever dies, but it is true to say that we can preserve our hope up until the moment we do. When death becomes a trapdoor to escape fear, that life is already over. Red stood before Brooks' tombstone in one of the most tense moments in the movie. We don't know if Red has the courage to face his fear. Brooks already told us, "...I'm tired of being afraid all the time," in a goodbye letter to his friends. Hope is choosing not to fear. Hope is the choice we make when we let either:
1) our reason, our minds, work out all the conditions, evaluate probabilities, and we say, "there is a chance, and the chance is enough to make me go for it..."Red made a rational decision. He was afraid, but he didn't have to be. And to escape his fear, he didn't have to end his life. He chose not to equivocate living with dying. Too many people don't have the reason, the courage, or the desire to avoid making that mistake.
2) our faith alone, our belief alone, motivate us to do something which may be irrational, or not, but is definitely not thought out. Hope of this sort is what is portrayed in "Braveheart" when Robert I the Bruce decides impetuously to charge against England and he wins. This sort of hope is the idealized/mystical version, considered superlative to (1)
Red said, in the closing lines of the book,
"...I find I'm so excited, I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it's the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend, and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope."Too many people believe that hope is a dangerous thing. I hear it all the time. It usually manifests itself as fear of the unknown, fear of what may happen if we choose wrongly. All we know for sure is that death is going to happen. My philosophy is that we ought to live in such a way so that death takes us by surprise, and that fear (death realized within life) doesn't become our way of life.
Hope may be a dangerous thing to some, leading them to the abyss of insanity. To me, insanity begins when we assert what we do not know, and induce fear where none must exist. To me, banking what we do know (that we are alive) on what we don't know (what comes afterwards) so that the former gets swallowed up in the latter is like being swallowed into the mouth of madness.
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