How did Larry break the chains of shelf-defeating thinking?

[Mark]

. “This prison doesn’t matter,” says Larry referring to the prison of concrete and steel. Breaking out of habitual patterns of self-destructive thinking can be more damaging and more difficult to break out of. How did Larry break those chains, with the help of Shakespeare? Question provided by the publisher.

[Mark]

It is difficult for anyone to change their ways of thinking. In the case of a convicted murder like Newton, the temptation has to be to blame others. In the case of someone in solitary confinement like Newton, a sense of hopelessness seems appropriate. That’s a lot to break out of.

Newton treats Shakespeare almost like scripture, as a way of inspiring himself to change. That choice is his alone. He could choose to treat Shakespeare as an academic exercise and detach himself from what he reads, but he makes the choice to profit from the experience. The parallels he sees between his own imprisonment and that of Richard II help him gain an understanding of his situation and his ability to cope with it. His excitement when he sees his own experience in the imprisonment of Richard II, makes me think he was ready for the experience before he started reading Shakespeare. Later, in chapter 48, he realizes he feared appearing weak in front of fellow gang members just as Macbeth fears seeming weak to his wife.

The author writes about how Newton quoted Nietzsche and Socrates and that similar reading materials circulates from prisoner to prisoner illegally. More intellectual pursuits was going on in prison than we might expect before Dr. Bates brought Shakespeare to them, so Newton may have been ready for Shakespeare without knowing it. I think that Newton enjoyment of Shakespeare contributed to his ability to find insights in the literature he could apply to his own life