Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption

While Red is the first-person narrator, the story is really about Andy. Red relays this early on: “Anyway, it’s not me I want to tell you about; I want to tell you about a guy named Andy Dufresne” (2).

Andy has faced extreme injustice. Prior to his conviction, Andy was a successful banker and seemed to have a good life. After his wife began an affair and Andy discovered it, his life spiraled downward. He arrives at Shawshank after being wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife and her affair partner. In prison, he continues to be treated with injustice, such as when the warden refuses to investigate the man who really murdered Andy’s wife. By showing the hardships that Andy faces and overcomes, King portrays The Resilience of the Human Spirit.

Andy is known for his calm manner. During his trial, he appears almost stoic. This works against him. Red recounts an exchange Andy had with the district attorney: “‘I swapped cars for the evening with a friend,’ Andy said, and this cool admission of how well-planned his investigation had been did him no good at all in the eyes of the jury” (7). In prison, Andy’s composed demeanor continues to not be well-received, such as by “the sisters,” a gang that sexually assaults him. Upon his arrival at Shawshank, Andy is immediately harassed, bullied, and eventually brutalized by various members of the gang. In spite of the horrors of these encounters, Andy does not lose his composure, a fact that impresses upon Red.

Unlike many of the inmates at Shawshank, Andy is educated and an intellectual. He cleverly earns protection for himself by helping the guards and Warden Norton with their personal accounting. In spite of being imprisoned, he dedicates himself to doing good, such as when pushing the legislators of his state to invest money in a library.

Andy knows quite a bit about geology and as a hobby, he collects and shapes rocks. This proves significant to his escape. Andy uses his interest in rocks to request that Red smuggle a rock hammer into the prison. Initially, Andy uses the hammer to collect and shape rocks. However, the rock hammer will also become a tool for digging his way out of prison.

In spite of being physically confined, Andy comports himself like a free man, wearing his “freedom like an invisible coat” (70). He has a sense of optimism and inner peace. His composure is tested throughout the novella—by his wrongful sentence, by “the sisters,” and especially by Warden Norton. After Tommy Williams reveals who killed Andy’s wife, Andy brings this information to the warden and is dismissed. In spite of having faced extreme injustice, this is the straw that almost breaks him. For years, Red says, Andy doesn’t seem quite the same. However, he doesn’t surrender to despair. As Red speculates, Andy has been digging a tunnel out of his prison cell, using the rock hammer that Red provided him.

Andy’s ultimate triumph in the face of injustice is the central message of the text. Andy is akin to a Christ figure, a character whose steadfast belief in hope almost never wavers. Andy offers a powerful example to Red, who gradually begins incorporating some of Andy’s values, such as an emphasis on hope and resolve in the face of injustice.

The warden is the story’s villain, and Red portrays him without the slightest degree of sympathy. Norton’s character contains no nuance or redeeming qualities. As Red says: “The man was the foulest hypocrite that I ever saw in a high position” (51). While the warden appears publicly to be a compassionate, god-fearing man, he is actually the opposite. The warden uses his authority at the prison to line his pockets. According to Red, “Norton was right in there on every operation, thirty-year church-pin and all; from cutting pulp to digging storm-drains to laying new culverts under state highways, there was Norton, skimming off the top” (51).

Norton is motivated by self-interest. The depths of his nefariousness is revealed when he refuses to investigate Tommy Williams’s news about who really murdered Andy’s wife, and sends Andy to solitary. He fears that Andy, if released, will disclose his corruption. King also implies that there is a deeper level to Norton’s evil. Norton doesn’t like how Andy carries himself as a free man, and wants to put him in his place.

After Andy’s escape, the warden resigns. Red says: “He was a broken man, it gives me great pleasure to report. The spring was gone from his step. On his last day he shuffled out with his head down like an old con shuffling down to the infirmary for his codeine pills” (92). The warden had wanted to see the spring gone from Andy’s step, and, in a form of justice, loses the spring from his own. He is now reduced to something of a prisoner himself.