In the book Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption written by Stephen King, Andy Dufresne is wrongfully imprisoned in Shawshank State Prison for the murder of his wife and her lover. Andy becomes involved in prison life while making friends. As the book, as well as the film, transpires, you see Andy become one of the prisoners. The movie describes him perfectly when Andy says, “On the outside I was an honest man, straight as an arrow. I had to come to prison for being a crook. Andy and the other inmates are all metaphorically and literally locked away, hiding from themselves. Shawshank uses solitary confinement to submerge prisoners so they cannot function beyond the prison walls. When Andy Dufresne walked through the gates of Shawshank, he was a man who kept to himself: “What was wrong with him he kept bottled up inside. If he ever had a dark night of the soul, as some writer has called it, you would never know” (9). But when Andy started making friends, life in prison started to get easier. The burden of being isolated and imprisoned ultimately made Andy a prisoner isolated from the real world. Just like Andy, the rest of the prisoners who have been there for a long time are also protected from the reality outside the prison walls. Just like in the movie, when Brooks gets out of prison on parole, he can't handle the outside world because he's too used to prison. He is assigned to an institution that gives him a job and is free to do whatever he wants, but he still thinks about life in prison. Prison seems to mold prisoners into their own creations isolated from the rest of humanity. Brooks for example couldn't grasp reality and just wanted to go back to prison or kill himself... middle of paper... something was missing in his life, almost as if he had a hole inside that needs filling. The prisoners are also missing something in their lives, which is why they ended up where they ended up. Jack Ganto's problem is that he doesn't know what that filler is: I sat on the dock. The river smelled like something dead. The sky was grey. I sat there and cried. I felt sad and hated myself for it. I felt defeated and hated myself for it. I didn't have a friend. I couldn't write a word. I was just waiting for the day to come when my whole life would change direction. And I was sure things weren't going to go my way. (Gantos 137) The fillers of prisoners are those of being accepted. They were never as accepted as they wanted to be in the real world, but in prison they all have some common qualities. They get accepted into prison and that becomes their real life and filler.