Analyzing Evil: Warden Samuel Norton From The Shawshank Redemption

hello everyone and welcome to the 44th episode of analyzing evil featuring our patron pick for the month of september warden samuel norton from the shawshank redemption often considered one of the greatest films ever made the shawshank redemption in my opinion also has the distinction of counting itself among the rare few films that managed to not only honor its source material but outshine it in a number of ways frank darabon's rendition of stephen king's novella rita hayworth and the shawshank redemption shortens an already short book while retaining and enhancing the elements within it there are a few things that were omitted or altered during the transition but they're minor take for example the subject of this video in the novella instead of a singular warden that stays with us throughout the story we are introduced to a few separate wardens during red's telling of the story and while this isn't necessarily a bad thing melding elements of each warden into one cohesive character gives us a foil for andy that makes warden norton one of the most memorable villains in cinematic history there are a few changes that were made between the book and the film that i will be highlighting when applicable but other than the aforementioned enhancements and omissions the warden norton we envision in the novella and the ward and norton we see in the film are close enough in character that we can accurately examine both by focusing on the film while layering differences from the book into our examination of the character now without further ado let's explore the righteously hypocritical warden samuel norton with the absence of any sort of backstory for ward and norton we'll start off at the beginning of the film the first time we set eyes on warden norton we're given a man who looks every bit a gentleman an impeccable suit neatly combed hair and a pin in the shape of a cross on his lapel this initial surface level impression imparts onto us viewers if only for a moment the image of a man who might just have a kind soul hiding behind his dark green eyes however that illusion is quickly shattered once he opens his mouth as after a polite introduction and his insistence on keeping the lord sacred in his prison he gives the slightest nod to his underling hadley who proceeds to drive the butt end of his baton into an unruly inmate's stomach now something we should get out of the way before we go any further into warden norton's character is the fact that this man is in charge of a prison and therefore criminals violent or not and these men are here to be punished within reason there's a key phrase though within reason does a smart mouth criminal deserve to know where he's at sure and the verbal lashing hadley gave him might have been just the thing he needed for a first time offense but rammed in the stomach with a baton for being a smart aleck not so much laws law enforcement and prisons exist for a reason but like anything else in the world they are far from perfect and to say that prisoners get either too much punishment or too little is a fair statement to make but i'm not here to talk about that lengthy and controversial subject i merely wanted to point out that in our first scene with the warden we are subject to his propensity to issue too much punishment rather than too little in the book this is still the case however physical punishment isn't something that the warden indulges rather he chooses to harm offenders by putting them on what the inmates call the grain and drain diet norton would send offenders to solitary confinement and put them on a diet of bread and water that would cause them to lose their teeth from malnutrition rather than beatings this version of warden norton even puts an end to the so-called midnight burials of his predecessors but makes an increase in the brutal practice of solitary confinement solitary confinement is another issue that's been debated on for a long time now as to whether it should be considered cruel and unusual punishment there's been a lot of research done on this particular form of punishment to support the idea that even a weak in solitary confinement can damage an otherwise healthy individual's mental health whereas a prison sentence it's designed to both correct your behavior and rehabilitate you solitary confinement is designed to break you down mentally cowing you into behaving according to the rules the prison has laid out for you laws without consequences would make no sense and punishment is necessary but as with anything in this world punishment has evolved over time in the past we used to send criminals to be tortured and executed in dungeons however we've since grown as a society and done away with much of the more archaic forms of punishment out there i know that even to this day there are still many places in the world where people are treated in barbarous ways but on the whole i'd argue that the way we handle crime in the modern day is a vast improvement from how crime was handled by our predecessors again even where things are better it's still not perfect and any man-made construct like law crime and punishment deserves to be debated on and improved over time i lean towards this practice being ultimately cruel and unnecessary as depriving a person of most of their human interaction without putting them in total isolation can be achieved by leaving them in their cell but issues like these aren't black and white and i'd be interested in hearing what you have to say about this practice however for the purposes of this video we're going to go with this punishment being yet another extension of the cruelty of warden norton after his introduction in the film we don't see the warden again until he accompanies his guards as they search the cells for contraband where we see him acting kindly towards andy now that he knows he has a talent he'll be able to make use of in the future this is as good a time as any to talk about warden norton's faith as he appears to be a genuinely religious man as we see him able to quote and recognize scripture from the bible and his insistence on providing his prisoners with a bible seems to be born out of a genuine desire to turn his flock to the path that he himself has found success salvation and security in however he's as mighty a hypocrite as he is a preacher and though i don't doubt that the warden does indeed believe in his faith he is more than willing to ignore some of its tenants to further his own aims take for example another extension of warden norton's mismanagement of shawshank in the form of the behavior of his staff we get a taste of this in his introductory scene where hadley with only a nod from the warden knows what the warden wants of him and proceeds to violate the snide prisoner before them a brutal subordinate is often just a reflection of the hand that controls them and this is the case with our most righteous warden norton a man who is quick to spread the word of god while his fingers dance along the strings of his violent minions we've already touched on his use of solitary confinement but this is yet another instance of the warden blatantly disregarding the suffering of his prisoners he shoves them in a room that amounts to nothing more than a closet one that has no bed and a toilet with no seat but of course these prisoners always have the word of the lord to keep them comfortable a luxury that i'm sure the warden views as the perfect opportunity for a man to be alone with his sins and repent for them with the help of the good book you could argue that some of these practices may indeed be entirely christian as the bible especially the old testament does contain its fair share of violence and punishment and the warden is simply operating according to his teachings but i think it's safe to say that fellow christians at least a good majority of them wouldn't be too keen on the way he handles his prisoners then of course outside of traditional punishment is his use of his prisoners in what he calls his inside out program where he sets them to work on various contracts that he can almost guarantee the acquisition of due to his use of what is essentially slave labor now this is actually a somewhat welcome program for the prisoners of shawshank as they're given the chance to spend time outside the confines of the prison working out in nature rather than in the dismal laundry or license plate factory but this is a criminal enterprise through and through as the warden is using the low-wage labor at his disposal to undercut the rest of the competition in town forcing businessmen honest or not to bribe the warden into setting his sights on other projects in order to keep their own businesses afloat suffice to say the warden is as much a criminal or more so than many of the inmates he houses at shawshank prison these actions that the warden is engaged in are terrible enough on their own but they're displayed to us in a much worse way once we're introduced to tommy who presents andy with a legitimate way out of his wrongful incarceration given a second lease on life we find an ecstatic andy presenting his newfound knowledge of his provable innocence to the warden knowledge that the warden meets with an obtuseness that betrays his true intentions keeping andy in prison no matter the cost the warden is obviously concerned with andy revealing his secrets and is thus afraid of his release but as he reveals in so many words to andy during his long stay in solitary confinement his real concern is the loss of profits he would have to bear if andy were released as without andy he has no way to launder his illicit revenue during this speech in the film he threatens andy with dismantling everything he had built during his stay in shawshank threatening to remove him from his contraband-filled cell revoke the protection of the guards and even threatening to wall off the library and burn all the books inside but in the book there's an extra layer to this speech that colors the warden as a spiteful and cruel man who wishes to bring down the souls of others as here he tells andy how disgusted he is by people like him people who can do their time as if they weren't doing any time at all he hated the way andy walked like one of those hellhounds at cocktail parties as he put it a man who thinks he's better than everyone else someone who in the warden's opinion deserved to be taught some humility a man who needed to learn their place in his world so the warden keeps andy in perpetual bondage to satisfy his own greed still treating him well to a certain degree but holding this man hostage all for his own selfish desire to line his pockets and to keep him where he belongs in the book he ensures that andy is unable to use tommy's testimony by transferring tommy to another prison sealing andy's fate for this iteration of the warden this is the total sum of his evil his use of a horrible form of solitary confinement running a criminal enterprise and holding andy as his own personal accounting slave the movie version is much the same with one added caveat that also gives the warden the distinction of being a murderer he didn't pull the trigger but he might as well have and here tommy meets his ultimate end for the warden's greed after the murder of tommy the warden continues to keep andy in bondage for some time but he himself meets his end due to his underestimation of his charge as an intelligent man with unlimited time one who has access to all of your dirty secrets and one who you've ensured would suffer unjustly under your care is one that you should always be wary of in the book the warden faces the scandals that ensue after andy's release and quietly retires shambling out of shawshank on his last day a broken man a fitting end for someone who sought to break the souls of others however in the film rather than face the consequences of his actions our dear warden decides to end his life showing himself as a man who can't bear to show the world the kind of monster he truly was on the inside an equally fitting end for such a self-centered man and at this end who was warden norton he was a hard-line christian who believed in reforming criminals through the healing power of his lord and strict discipline a hard man himself he showed very little emotion or empathy especially when it came to the suffering of people he deemed to be lesser than himself criminal heathens and blasphemers who deserve to know their place in the world though the warden projected an outward persona of righteousness he was the very definition of a hypocrite a man who condemned criminals while using them to run a criminal enterprise of his own lining his own pockets with the use of manipulation and monopolization employing solitude and nutritional deprivation as a means to keep his prisoners in line using his well-trained dogs chief among them being byron hadley to enforce his will choosing to murder one man to cow another into keeping his empire running smoothly warden norton presided over a system that was tailored to meet his own ends and when his hubris and cruelty finally got the best of him his weakness truly showed in his inability to face the consequences of his actions choosing to at least in the film take the coward's way out suicide is no joke and i don't mean to demean it or people who take their lives due to a variety of other issues but killing oneself in this way is nothing more than a person who lived their life taking advantage of others being unable to answer for actions they themselves fervently condemned an action which shows warden norton to be nothing more than a self-centered and hypocritical man who couldn't stand the heat of the flames he himself stoked a man who leaves behind him a legacy of callous brutality unrepentant criminality and corruption warden norton is one of the finest examples of a man so steeped in his own self-righteous view of others and the world around him that he believes himself immune to the very guidelines he forces upon others transgressions that the creator he so loves would be quick to condemn as a man like samuel norton is far from holy and much more comfortable nestled in a bed of evil thank you all for tuning in to this episode of analyzing evil and i hope you've enjoyed what are your thoughts on warden norton did i miss anything let me know down below and leave a suggestion for a villain you'd like to see featured in a future episode while you're at it if you liked this video and want to see more like it appearing in your feed click the subscribe button to keep up on the latest episodes and feel free to leave a like while you're at it thank you once again to all of my existing subscribers for your continued and incredible support if you'd like to support the channel even further consider signing up as a patron over on patreon you can find a link to patreon down in the description thank you to everyone who signed up so far and a most vile thank you to those whose names you're seeing on screen now join the channel's discord server to interact with myself and the community and follow me on the social media platforms listed in the description for occasional updates on the channel as always thanks for watching and i'll be seeing you soon

Channel: The Vile Eye

Views: 278,955

Keywords: Tim Robins, Morgan Freeman, Frank Darabont, Stephen King, Evil, Villain, Prison, Analysis

Id: 07sIviggH8M

Length: 15min 37sec (937 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 01 2021