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Author ORCID Identifier

0009-0008-8659-284X

Abstract

This article offers a Kierkegaardian reading of The Shawshank Redemption (1994), arguing that the film functions not as a miracle narrative but as a cinematic enactment of existential theology. While existing scholarship frequently interprets Shawshank through biblical typology or Foucauldian notions of incarceration, few consider how the film dramatizes Kierkegaard’s categories of anxiety, despair, and the leap of faith. Shawshank presents prison as more than a space of punishment—it becomes a refuge from the “dizziness of freedom,” a structured escape from the terrifying burden of possibility. Brooks’s suicide tragically embodies what Kierkegaard calls the “despair of weakness,” the inability to exist as a self outside institutional certainty. Andy Dufresne, by contrast, cultivates an inward life that survives confinement, ultimately performing a postsecular form of faith grounded in human action rather than divine intervention. His escape transforms utopia from non-place into lived space, enacting hope against hopelessness. By reading the film through Kierkegaard, supplemented by Soja’s Thirdspace and Habermas’ postsecular theory, this article reframes Shawshank as a story of salvation without miracle, redemption without metaphysics, and hope made real through inward commitment and outward action.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

VolNum

30

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