Blog Assignment #2

Finding Your Howl



The short story, "Finding Your Howl" by Jonathon Flaum is about the last surviving red wolfs in the wild in 1970.  These wolfs were held in captivity in order to protect them.  The captives offspring were released back into the wild, but they had lost the ability to howl. Without this important way of communicating, the wolfs could not collectively hunt.  One wolf named Mumon decides to leave the pack to find the ability to howl again.  After meeting a few helpful characters on his journey, he realizes that the ability to howl was within him the  whole time. 




What influences me? 


        RED: [narrating] I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free. 


This is some of the most beautiful writing that I have heard spoken in a movie.  In 1994, the movie The Shawshank Redemption came out, and blew audiences away.  This film starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman, spoke truths about freedom, and what it really feels like to become "institutionalized."  To this day, The Shawshank Redemption is one of the most beloved films of all time among critics and general film fans alike.  This quote represents just how when humans are striped down to nothing, something so minor as the sound of music, can move the cold hearts of the prisoners.  I have no idea what it is like to be in a prison.  Hopefully I will never have to experience that.  I do know however, that if people can be that moved by "two Italian ladies" it means that they have lost a lot.  I excites me that films are still able to touch people.  To me, dialogue is the most important thing in a movie.  This is why I don't find movies like Transformers all that entertaining.  In the film, red has been in prison for nearly 40 years, and him stating that he feels free because of the music is quite amazing.  
     A big theme that this movie deals with is the idea of being institutionalized.  This is when someone is part of a system for so long, that when they are given freedom from their routine, they don't know how to handle it.  One of the characters in The Shawshank Redemption, named Brooks, finally got released from prison after being there for over fifty years.  Prison was his home, and it was what he knew.  When he was finally let go, there was now way for him to cope with the new world.  Social life had changed so much in fifty years, and he simply could not fit in.  Brooks ended up killing himself in his apartment.  Freedom seems like such an inevitable thing for the prisoners of shawshank.  Most just have to acept the fact that they are never getting out.  So from Brooks, he was more than willing to stay in shawshank if he could.  Music was not allowed in the prison, so when Red heard it playing on the loud speakers thanks to his fellow inmate, Andy Dufresne, who played the music from the warden's office.  Andy got a hefty beating after such behavior, but that didn't matter.  It was worth it to have his friends feel so free after such a long time.  
     The reason this speaks to my creative side is because, it motivates me to not settle for simple and lazy material.  The dialogue in Shawshank is outstanding, and it is the major element that lets this movie shine.  Dialogue is something that is seriously lacking in films today.  The film industry needs to step it up and start producing material that is worth viewing, especially with ticket prices being as high as they are.  This motivates me to want to write for films.