Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Institutionalization vs. Freedom
Stories, Memory, and Hope
Gender Stereotypes, Sex, and Violence
Corruption, Purity, and Accommodation
Justice and Rehabilitation
Summary
Analysis
The narrator introduces himself as a prison stereotype, the man “who can get it for you,” i.e. obtain contraband. Unlike most prisoners in Shawshank, he admits he committed the crime he’s in prison for: he cut the brakes on his wife’s car after buying a life insurance policy for her. His wife happened to give a neighbor and her young son a ride that day, and all three died. At 20, the narrator was convicted of a triple homicide and given three consecutive life sentences.
The narrator, introducing himself, does not tell readers his name, only his role in prison society. This omission suggests the narrator identifies with the prison environment rather than considering himself an individual who will one day be free. He also gives no hints about why he’s telling a story, creating mystery and suspense about his motives. With matter-of-fact brevity, he reveals he murdered his wife –and accidentally killed two other people in the process. This backstory hints that male violence against women may be common in the culture the novella describes. It also makes the reader wonder what kind of person the narrator is. On the one hand, the narrator admits the crime he committed and clearly did not intend two of the three deaths he caused, which may imply his three consecutive life sentences are an unjust punishment. On the other hand, the narrator freely admits to smuggling contraband—“it,” whatever it is—which suggests that prison, rather than rehabilitating him, has perhaps made him more likely to commit additional crimes.
Themes
The narrator acknowledges he committed a horrible act but contends it’s history, like “the news of Hitler and Mussolini and FDR’s alphabet soup agencies.” As to whether prison has “rehabilitated” him, he professes not to know the word’s meaning. While he may figure it out, “that is the future . . . something cons teach themselves not to think about.” He grew up poor, married a rich girl because she got pregnant, and discovered his father-in-law intended to control him and treat him like an animal. The miserable situation eventually led him to murder. In hindsight, he wishes he hadn’t committed the murder, but he doesn’t equate that wish with his rehabilitation.
“FDR’s alphabet soup agencies” refers to U.S. government agencies created under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal (1933 – 1939), projects and reforms intended to help struggling Americans during the Great Depression, which began in 1929. This reference, as well as the allusions to Adolf Hitler (who became Nazi Germany’s fascist dictator in 1933) and Benito Mussolini (Italy’s fascist prime minister from 1922 to 1943), suggest the narrator murdered his wife in the 1930s. The narrator’s refusal to believe that prison has rehabilitated him, despite his regret at having committed murder, suggests two things: first, the narrator is genuinely guilty and self-critical, and second, prison doesn’t help the imprisoned become better people. The narrator’s offhand comment that the future is “something cons teach themselves not to think about,” meanwhile, suggests that prison destroys or erodes prisoners’ capacity for hope.
Themes
The narrator wants to tell a story not about himself, but about a man named Andy Dufresne—the narrator is simply providing context first. He reiterates he’s been obtaining contraband for other prisoners for almost 40 years. He smuggles more to build up his reputation than for money, and he won’t smuggle firearms or serious drugs because he’s been involved in enough murder. In 1949, Andy Dufresne asks him to smuggle Rita Hayworth, and he agrees.
Now the narrator reveals why he’s telling this story: he has something to communicate about Andy Dufresne. Presumably, Andy must be special in some way—but the narrator doesn’t yet tell readers how, creating more suspense. The narrator’s offhand revelation that he refuses to smuggle anything deadly suggests, again, that he genuinely repents having committed murder—and that 40 years in prison may be an excessive punishment. That he claims to have smuggled Rita Hayworth is bizarre—Rita Hayworth (1918 – 1987) was an actress especially famous in the 1940s, and it’s not clear how an incarcerated man could smuggle her into a prison. Hayworth’s sex symbol status, however, implies Andy may have had romantic motives for asking about her.
Themes
Entering prison, Andy Dufresne is a small, fair-haired, 30-year-old man with glasses and “always clean” fingernails. Before prison, he had a high-ranking job in a Portland bank. He was convicted of murdering his wife (Linda) and the man she was having an affair with (Glenn Quentin). The narrator says that in his decades of incarceration, he’s only trusted 10 prisoners’ claims of innocence. He now believes Andy’s innocent, but he wouldn’t have believed it if he’d been a juror at Andy’s trial.
Andy’s appearance—physically unintimidating and fastidious about “clean” hands—makes him seem an unlikely murderer. That he, like the narrator, was convicted of murdering his wife implies that when a woman is murdered, it’s reasonable to suspect the husband. The narrator’s belief in Andy’s innocence suggests the criminal justice system failed to apprehend the true murderer while incarcerating an innocent man—a disturbing possibility. Yet since the narrator admits he would’ve thought Andy was guilty if he’d attended the trial, readers may suppose the story the prosecution told about Andy was convincing.
Themes
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The district attorney prosecuting Andy wanted to run for higher office. He used the “juicy” trial to raise his profile. Andy agreed with the prosecutor’s account in some respects: in 1947 his wife Linda started taking golf lessons at a country club and began an affair with her instructor, Glenn Quentin. Andy found out, and on September 10, 1947, he and Linda fought. When she told him she wanted a divorce, he replied “he would see her in hell” first. Linda went to Glenn’s, where they were found shot to death the next morning.
The prosecuting attorney has an ulterior motive to convict Andy: political ambition. This detail hints the attorney is a bad actor, corrupting a legal system intended to make impersonal judgments and produce justice. Andy’s admission that he told Linda “he would see her in hell” rather than divorce her is interesting. It does suggest Andy is telling the truth—otherwise, why would he confirm a detail that makes him sound hostile and violent? Yet it also suggests he really did have hostile, jealous, possessive feelings toward his unfaithful wife.
Themes
Glenn and Linda were each shot four times, which the district attorney claimed showed Andy was an emotionless, premeditated murderer. On the stand, a pawnshop worker said that two days before the murders, Andy had bought a .38 from him. A bartender said Andy had three whiskeys in the country club on September 10, announced he was going to Glenn’s, and said the bartender “could ‘read about the rest of it in the papers.’” A clerk at a store near Glenn’s said that later the same night, Andy bought cigarettes, beer, and dishtowels. A detective said that they found beer cans, cigarette butts, and tire tracks matching Andy’s car near Glenn’s house. Inside the house, they found dishtowels with bullet holes in them, which the detective believes were used as makeshift silencers.
This sequence of witnesses, testifying to suspicious things Andy did, makes clear why the jury would vote to convict him: the district attorney has assembled alarming details and woven them into a scary narrative about Andy. Particularly damning is the bartender’s claim that Andy said he was going to Glenn’s and that others “could ‘read about the rest of it in the papers’”—suggesting that, whether he murdered Linda and Glenn or not, he intended to commit an act of newsworthy violence.
Themes
Andy testified that after he began to hear rumors about Linda and Glenn, he followed Linda when she’d said she’d be shopping and saw her go to Glenn’s house. Emotionlessly, he claimed he bought the .38 because he was thinking of killing himself. The narrator believes that because Andy was so emotionally controlled, the jurors disbelieved him.
Andy testified to suicidal thoughts without displaying emotion, illustrating his self-contained and self-controlled personality. That the jurors refused to believe an emotionless man telling an emotional truth suggests that it isn’t enough to tell the truth to be believed. Rather, a person has to tell a convincing story about the truth.
Themes
Andy also testified he’d been drinking continuously between his discovery of the affair and Linda’s murder. The narrator thinks the jurors didn’t believe Andy due to his emotional cool. But in prison, Andy asked the narrator to procure him only four drinks a year: two on his birthday, one on Christmas, and one on New Year’s Eve. The narrator believes Andy drank rarely because he’d had bad experiences drinking. In court, Andy testified he was so drunk the night Linda and Glenn were murdered that he couldn’t remember much. He remembered going to the country club bar but not talking to the bartender; he remembered buying beer but not dishtowels.
The narrator believes Andy was telling the truth because he’s had more opportunities to observe Andy that the jurors did; when 12 strangers judge a defendant, they may make snap decisions based on superficial impressions—potentially a bad way to arrive at a just outcome. Again, Andy gives tonally cold and self-incriminating testimony, admitting he can’t remember everything he did the night of the murder. These admissions make it more likely Andy is telling the truth—surely he could invent better lies—and yet, because he refuses to craft a good story, the jury doubts him. Readers may wonder whether Andy might be wise to be less scrupulous about telling the truth and try to sell the jury on his innocence.
Themes
In prison, Andy and the narrator discuss the dishtowels. Andy speculates that the police, who have discovered dishtowels in Glenn’s house, may have planted a false memory of selling dishtowels in the man who sold Andy beer—or that the man fabricated the memory because the attention the notorious case gave him turned his head. After all, Andy notes, “memory is such a goddam subjective thing.” Despite his own memory gaps, Andy’s sure he didn’t buy the dishtowels: he was too drunk to have considered silencing his gun.
When Andy insists that memory is “subjective,” he seems to be claiming that the stories people tell themselves about past events influence—and even change—how people remember them. In other words, stories shape a person’s perception of reality. Thus, stories are extremely powerful—powerful enough to put an innocent man in prison.
Themes
In court, Andy testified he’d staked out Glenn’s house while smoking and drinking beer but then driven home. In cross examination, the district attorney pushed back against Andy’s claim that he bought the .38 to kill himself, claiming he didn’t seem “the suicidal type.” The district attorney also heaped scorn on Andy’s claim that he’d thrown his .38 in the river the day before the murders, as the police dragged the river and couldn’t find the gun. When the DA called this “convenient,” Andy said it was “decidedly inconvenient”—the gun could prove his innocence. When the DA asked how Andy would explain the murders, since Glenn and Linda weren’t robbed (and so there was no alternative motive), Andy couldn’t. The jury voted to convict him after two and a half hours of deliberation, including lunch.
When the district attorney claims Andy isn’t “the suicidal type” and the loss of Andy’s gun is “convenient,” he’s telling a plausible, compelling story about the person Andy supposedly is and what he actually did during the murders. By contrast, Andy merely points out, with dry irony, that losing the gun was “decidedly inconvenient” (forensic analysis could have proved it didn’t shoot Glenn and Linda). Andy refuses to debase himself by performing his innocence and spinning tales; he won’t even speculate about who did commit the murders. In the corrupt world of the novella, this refusal may be admirable, but it also seems unwise, given that it lands Andy in prison.
Themes
In 1955, Andy and the narrator discuss what may have happened the night of the murders. Andy thinks a “burglar” or a “psychopath” killed Linda and Glenn; he blames his conviction on a coincidence, which “condemned [him] to spend the rest of his life in Shawshank—or the part of it that mattered.” Though later he begins to get parole hearings, the narrator hears that the parole board keeps voting unanimously or near unanimously to deny parole, and Andy stays in prison until 1975. Jokingly, the narrator speculates they might finally have paroled Andy in 1983.
The story of a jealous husband murdering his wife has far more cultural cachet and plausibility than the story of a random coincidence. In other words, Andy was condemned because the district attorney told a better story than he did—and because people make gendered, stereotyped assumptions about men reacting violently to female infidelity. Andy’s comment that he’ll spend “the part of [his life] that mattered” in Shawshank demonstrates not only the injustice of his conviction, but possibly also the injustice of a correctional system that promises rehabilitation yet keeps people locked up until they’re old and infirm.
Themes
Then the narrator tells a story about a prisoner who kept a pet pigeon named Jake. After the prisoner was paroled, he let the pigeon go—but the next week, another prisoner saw the pigeon, “look[ing] starved,” dead in the exercise yard.
The story of the tame pigeon that “starved” after being freed illustrates how captivity can render captives unable to deal with freedom when they finally have it again—possibly foreshadowing problems for imprisoned characters who eventually leave Shawshank.
Themes
In 1948, the first time Andy approaches the narrator for something, it occurs in the Shawshank exercise yard. The narrator has already heard about Andy’s reputation for standoffishness but prefers not “to listen to rumors” if he has the chance to form his own opinions. Andy asks the narrator to get him a rock-hammer. When the narrator asks why Andy wants it, Andy asks whether he usually asks customers that. The narrator says he does if customers are asking for something that could be used as a murder weapon.
The narrator’s disdain for “rumors” about Andy is peculiar, since he himself is now telling a story about Andy. His disdain hints that he’s an independent thinker—he likes exercising his freedom to make up his own mind—and he believes his version of events to be truer than mere rumor, even if memory is as subjective as Andy claims. Andy’s request for a “rock-hammer”—a very specific item—implies he may have an interest in rock-collecting. The narrator’s response reminds readers of his personal rule about not smuggling murder weapons and again raises the question: is it just to keep this man in prison for 40 years, when he regrets his murder and wants to avoid committing violence?
Themes
As the narrator and Andy are talking, a baseball comes hurtling at them. Andy catches it casually and throws it right back. Given the narrator’s reputation and influence around the prison, he’s impressed that Andy isn’t “sucking up” to him.
The narrator’s sense that Andy isn’t “sucking up” suggests Andy throws the baseball competently but not showily. Together with the early descriptions of Andy as slight, neat, and good-looking, the novella paints a picture of Andy as physically competent, but not someone who overtly or aggressively performs his masculinity.
Themes
Andy explains to the narrator that he used to collect rocks. He sifts through dirt from the exercise yard, finds a piece of quartz, and shows it to the narrator. The narrator finds the quartz oddly touching, because it reminds him of free settings, for example “a small, quick-running stream.” Yet he insists Andy could use the rock-hammer to kill someone or try to escape. Andy denies he has enemies and laughs at the idea you could use a rock-hammer to tunnel out.
Andy’s ability to find quartz, a beautiful crystal, within a prison yard demonstrates his internal freedom: prison can inhibit his movements, but it can’t destroy his humane appreciation of beauty. That the quartz touches the narrator and reminds him of a “quick-running stream”—of the natural world outside the prison—shows how Andy’s internal freedom inspires the desire for freedom in others.
Themes
The narrator and Andy settle on a price for the rock-hammer, 10 dollars. When the narrator asks Andy whether he has the money, Andy says he does. The narrator will later learn Andy smuggled more than 500 dollars into the prison by hiding it in his rectum.
The revelation that Andy smuggled 500 dollars into prison inside his own rectum illustrates both his resourcefulness and his intense desire to exercise agency, taking some control over his environment even when in prison.
Themes
The narrator tells Andy that if the correctional officers catch Andy with the hammer, they’ll take it away, put Andy in solitary confinement for several weeks, and record the infraction on Andy’s record. He warns Andy that if Andy tells them who procured the hammer, he’ll never get anything for Andy again—and he’ll get some other prisoners to beat Andy up. Andy agrees to the narrator’s terms.
The narrator threatens Andy with violence if he tattles to the guards about the hammer—demonstrating that while the narrator regrets committing murder and won’t deal dangerous drugs, he feels some violence is necessary to operate in prison. This sense of necessity in turn suggests that prison doesn’t rehabilitate incarcerated people but, as is the case here, pressures them to engage in more corrupt and violent behavior.
Themes
Andy sneaks 10 dollars to the narrator a few days later. The narrator procures the hammer and passes it to Andy through an intermediary, though he knows the hammer could kill someone and worries Andy might use it as a weapon, since Andy has “begun having trouble with the sisters.” The next weekend, Andy—covered in bruises—thanks the narrator in the exercise yard. As Andy walks away, the narrator sees him palm a rock and hide it in his sleeve. The narrator thinks well of Andy’s sleight-of-hand and his resilience. He doesn’t see Andy much over the next stretch of time, since Andy is frequently punished with solitary confinement.
At this point, the narrator does not explain who “the sisters” are. Readers may be confused, since “sisters” implies female people and Shawshank is a men’s prison. Whoever “the sisters” are, the “trouble” they cause Andy seems to involve violence, since the narrator sees him covered in bruises. Despite his pain, Andy engages in clever sleight-of-hand with a rock, which the narrator admires—illustrating Andy’s persistent spirit in the face of adversity and that spirit’s emotional effect on others.
Themes
The narrator explains what “the sisters” means in Shawshank. He distinguishes between three types of prisoners who have sex with other men: otherwise straight men whose libidos demand sex of some kind, even when women aren’t available; men who realize they are gay during incarceration and “play the female”; and “the sisters.” Though some gay prisoners “have ‘crushes’” on the sisters and would have consensual sex with them, the sisters are men who prefer to rape other prisoners.
Here the narrator provides a taxonomy of gay prison sex that implicitly endorses certain stereotypes about men in general and gay men in particular, i.e. that many men’s libidos simply demand sex, regardless of the available partners, and that gay men are somehow “female” or feminine in their sexual behaviors. The nickname “the sisters” suggests a homophobic and sexist conflation of gay men with women. At the same time, the existence of a rapist gang in prison suggests that for some men, inflicting violence on physically weaker parties—male or female—is sexually gratifying.
Themes
The sisters begin attacking Andy soon after his incarceration—attacks the narrator attributes to Andy’s slightness, attractiveness, and “that very quality of self-possession” the narrator finds likable. Andy’s first week at Shawshank, the sisters grope him in the showers—and he hits one, Bogs Diamond, in the face. A correctional officer breaks up the fight. Later, four of Bogs’s friends rape Andy in the laundry. The narrator, who’s been raped before, says that afterwards, a man usually bleeds for several days; he uses toilet paper to stanch the bleeding to avoid other prisoners’ joking about his “period.” Though the rapes don’t cause lasting bodily trauma, the narrator admits they can damage a man’s sense of identity.
The narrator believes Andy’s arguably feminine qualities—his small stature, prettiness, and reserved “self-possession”—make him a target for prison rapists, a belief suggesting that in the absence of women, sexually violent men target men who remind them of women. Both Andy and the narrator are raped in prison, implying sexual assault is common there—another detail illustrating the injustice of the criminal justice system, as no one, regardless of what crimes they have committed, should be punished with rape.
Themes
The narrator speculates that after the first rape, Andy realizes what all the sisters’ victims realize: he’ll be raped no matter what, but he can choose whether to resist. When Bogs comes after Andy with two of his friends, Andy breaks one friend’s nose. All three rape Andy, and then Bogs menaces Andy with a razor and demands oral sex. Andy replies, “Anything of yours that you stick in my mouth, you’re going to lose it.” When Bogs says he’ll stab Andy in the head if he bites, Andy explains that head trauma causes people to “bite down” on reflex. Instead of continuing to assault Andy, Bogs and his friends pummel him. Andy and his assailants end up in solitary confinement for fighting, though Andy and the man whose nose he broke go to the infirmary first.
Andy manages to assert his free will by resisting the sisters’ assaults even though he knows he can’t win the fights. By fighting, he is declaring that no matter what the rapists do, he will not consent. On one occasion, Andy avoids further violation not through physical strength but through cleverness: he convinces Bogs that causing Andy head trauma will cause a bite reflex and thereby avoids forced oral sex. This anecdote shows Andy’s eschewal of violent masculinity in favor of cleverness. That Andy is punished with solitary confinement for fighting his rapists, meanwhile, shows the cruelty of the prison system.
Themes
The summer after Andy enters Shawshank, Bogs is very violently beaten one night. The narrator speculates that Andy, who smuggled money into prison, “bribed” some poorly paid correctional officers to attack Bogs. After his beating, Bogs stops trying to rape Andy or anyone else. Other sisters keep attacking Andy, but because he violently resists, they target him less. Correctional officers punish Andy with solitary confinement for fighting, but the narrator speculates Andy “g[ets] along with himself” and so minds solitary less. The narrator notes that the sisters stop attacking Andy “almost completely” in 1950, “a part of the story I’ll get to in due time.”
If Andy in fact bribed a guard to beat up Bogs, it shows the prison system is corrupt. It also shows how Andy uses not physical strength but intelligent foresight, e.g. smuggling money into prison, to exercise agency in an unfree environment. Disturbingly, it seems no guards would protect Andy from rape without a bribe, and guards still punish him for fighting to protect himself—signs the prison doesn’t care about Andy’s safety, let alone his rehabilitation. The narrator’s casual claim that he’ll explain “in due time” why the sisters stopped attacking Andy draws attention to the fact that he is self-consciously crafting the story. This may also make readers wonder whether he’s a reliable narrator.
Themes
In autumn 1948, the narrator sells Andy six rock-blankets, tools for polishing rocks. Almost half a year later, during the prison’s monthly film screening, Andy—acting furtive—asks the narrator for a pin-up poster of Rita Hayworth. The narrator, amused by Andy’s demeanor, asks whether Andy wants a small or a four-foot poster. Andy asks for the four-foot one. The narrator offers to sell it to him at “wholesale price,” because Andy’s bought from him in the past and never used the hammer to attack the sisters.
Andy’s purchase of rock-blankets suggests he’s polishing the rocks he finds, exercising his agency to create beautiful things in the miserable Shawshank environment. At this point, readers realize the narrator has misled them—though perhaps not directly—when he said he smuggled Rita Shawshank into prison. In fact, he smuggled a poster of her. Thus, from the moment the pin-up posters are introduced, they are associated with misdirection. The narrator seems to be amused by Andy’s furtive demeanor because he thinks Andy’s embarrassed about using the poster as a visual aid to sexual fantasies—but Andy never explains his motives, leaving readers to wonder whether the narrator has misinterpreted Andy. That the narrator sells to Andy “wholesale,” meanwhile, betrays the narrator’s fondness for Andy and their growing friendship.
Themes
The narrator sells a lot of pin-up posters. The people running the prison are aware the prisoners sell contraband, but when the contraband is harmless, like posters, administrators pretend to believe prisoners’ relatives sent it. When the prisoners let off steam harmlessly, it’s easier for administrators. After the narrator gets Andy the Rita Hayworth poster, he sees it hung up in Andy’s cell while he’s walking to breakfast, Rita’s face striped by shadows from the bars on the cell window.
Prison staff don’t enforce rules against harmless contraband. From this, readers can infer either that staff think the rules are excessively harsh, or that they don’t care much what prisoners do unless it affects staff, the prison’s claim to be an institution of rehabilitation notwithstanding. The shadows barring Rita’s face remind readers of the characters’ confinement; since Rita is a sex symbol, they additionally remind readers that prison deprives men of female companionship and sex with women when it deprives them of freedom. Readers may wonder, then, whether women come to symbolize freedom to male prisoners—and, if so, whether the prisoners buy pin-up posters out of sexual desire or a yearning to be free.
Themes
The narrator announces he’s going to explain how Andy got the sisters to leave him alone, once and for all, in 1950—an event that also leads to Andy switching prison jobs, from the laundry to the library, where he worked until he exited Shawshank “earlier this year.” The narrator admits that much of what he’s recounted about Andy is prison “hearsay” and that Andy is almost “more legend than man” in Shawshank, but that he witnessed the particular event he’s about to recount.
Again, the narrator draws attention to the fact that he is self-consciously crafting this story. His admission that he uses “hearsay” to reconstruct some events and that Andy is a “legend” might make the reader question his story’s reliability—yet by admitting the gaps in his knowledge, he establishes himself as a relatively truthful narrator. Interestingly, he casually mentions that Andy left prison “earlier this year”—without letting readers know under what circumstances Andy left or what year he means, thus increasing suspense.
Themes
By the time the event occurs, Andy and the narrator are decent friends. This is in part because, several weeks after the narrator got Andy the Rita Hayworth pin-up poster, Andy sent the narrator (through an intermediary) two beautifully polished quartz crystals, which filled the narrator with “awe for the man’s brute persistence.”
This passage explicitly connects Andy’s rock collecting to his “brute persistence,” hinting that rock-shaping will symbolize Andy’s resilience and indomitable spirit throughout the novella. That the gift fills the narrator with “awe” shows how Andy’s spirit is capable of inspiring grand emotions in others.
Themes
The event occurs in May 1950, when the narrator, Andy, and several other prisoners are chosen to tar the roof of the prison’s license-plate factory. Six correctional officers guard the prison workers, including one named Byron Hadley. Hadley is friends with Greg Stammas, who becomes warden in 1953 after the previous warden is fired for making money off of the prison garage.
The narrator mentions, casually, that one Shawshank warden was fired for illegally profiting off the prison garage. Both the anecdote and the narrator’s casual recounting of it suggest corruption is commonplace among the prison’s staff.
Themes
While watching the prisoners tar the roof, Hadley is whining about a piece of good luck. The narrator notes that some correctional officers become “saintly” because they recognize how lucky they are in comparison to prisoners—but Hadley is not one of the saints. Hadley always sees the worst in any situation. He's complaining loudly to another correctional officer, Mert Entwhistle, that his estranged older brother, whom he disliked, has died and left him $35,000—and he’s going to have to pay taxes on it.
The narrator, himself an observant storyteller, notices that observing and understanding prisoners’ unlucky situations makes some prison guards “saintly.” This detail suggests that empathetic storytelling has the power to change people’s worldviews. Notably, this change has not occurred in Byron Hadley, whose complaints about having to pay legal taxes suggest he would corruptly evade them if he could.
Themes
Andy stops working, walks over to Hadley, and asks whether Hadley’s wife is trustworthy. Hadley threatens to throw Andy off the roof if he doesn’t get back to work. The narrator believes that no matter how Andy reacts, he’ll get beaten—but he can avoid worsening his punishment. He wants to warn Andy but keeps working in silence, because he takes care of himself. Andy rephrases the question to Hadley: it’s not so much about “trust” as about whether Hadley’s wife “would ever go behind [his] back.” Hadley tells Mert they’ll throw Andy off the roof.
When Andy exercises the slightest freedom—in this case, stopping work and asking a guard a question—the guard threatens him with violence, a response that shows the prison staff don't care about rehabilitating the prisoners, only controlling them. The narrator’s praiseworthy desire to help Andy—and his immediate repression of that desire—shows how the prison environment tends to make people worse, not ‘rehabilitate’ them. That Andy is asking questions about whether Hadley can trust his wife, meanwhile, reminds readers that Andy’s in prison because his wife was murdered after cheating on him. Readers may, therefore, worry how Hadley—who’s already expressed violent tendencies—would react if his wife did “go behind [his] back.”
Themes
The two correctional officers grab him. Andy, coolly, tells Hadley that if he can control his wife, he can keep all $35,000. After Hadley tells Mert to stop dragging Andy toward the roof’s edge, Andy explains that by law, spouses can make a gift of as much as $60,000 to each other without the IRS levying taxes on it. Hadley says he thinks Andy must be lying, but the narrator can tell Hadley’s suddenly hopeful.
Though unable to fight off the two men dragging him toward the roof’s edge, Andy once again exercises agency in a dangerous situation through his knowledge and intelligence, using his background in banking to give Hadley a useful tip.
Themes
As a former banker, Andy offers to do the paperwork arranging Hadley’s gift in exchange for three beers for each prisoner working on the roof. The narrator and the other prisoners suddenly sense that even though Hadley could still throw Andy off the roof and get some other banker to arrange the gift, Andy has bested Hadley. Hadley agrees to get the beers, and Andy tells him he’ll list the forms Hadley needs and complete them so Hadley can sign them. Hadley threatens violence against Andy if Andy’s somehow cheating him, and Andy affirms he’s heard.
Though Hadley has all the institutional power in this scene—he’s a guard, while Andy is a prisoner—Andy’s intelligence and self-possession allow him to take control of their interactions, demonstrating how empowering it can be for a person to have a sense of their own agency and worth even when their situation is constraining or oppressive.
Themes
Hadley gets the beer on the prisoners’ penultimate day tarring the roof. Everyone drinks except Andy, who just sits and smiles. The narrator notes that while fewer than a dozen prisoners are working on the roof, hundreds of prisoners later claim to have been there. Returning to the question of whether the Andy he remembers is a person or a myth, the narrator suggests he’s “somewhere in between.” He notes Andy had an unusual quality for a prisoner: self-esteem, or hope for a good outcome, or “a sense of freedom”—an “inner light” the narrator sees him “lose” just one time.
Andy doesn’t drink with the other prisoners, supporting the narrator’s earlier speculation that Andy drinks rarely because he’s had problems with abusing alcohol. This detail makes Andy’s claim, while on trial, that he was abusing alcohol during the breakup of his marriage more plausible. The narrator’s belief that Andy is “somewhere in between” a real person and a legend for Shawshank’s prisoners means that while Andy really did some of the things for which the prisoners admire him, his “sense of freedom” has made him a larger-than-life figure. When the narrator says Andy will “lose” this sense of freedom at some point, it foreshadows dire events to come.
Themes
After the roofing job, Hadley and Stammas warn the sisters not to assault Andy—and they don’t. Two years later, the man who ran the prison library gets paroled at age 68. Unable to adjust to free life, he dies a year later in a nursing home for impoverished elderly people. Andy becomes the librarian for the next 23 years, slowly making improvements. He creates a suggestion box for books prisoners would like to read, sends letters to book clubs and getting discounted “major selections”; and buys how-to manuals related to prisoners’ hobbies and novels by “Erie Stanley Gardner and Louis L’Amour.”
Once Andy makes himself useful to the prison staff, they protect him from rape—which suggests they could have protected him before but chose not to. That the staff aren’t trying very hard to prevent rapes in the prison betrays their corruption and the prison’s failure as an institution of rehabilitation. The anecdote about the old prison librarian dying soon after parole illustrates how the prison often hold prisoners too long for them to make anything of their lives after release. The novelist Erle Stanley Gardner (1889 – 1970) is famous for creating the character Perry Mason, a criminal defense lawyer, while Louis L’Amour (1908 – 1988) is most famous for writing westerns. That the prisoners love these novelists shows their desire for stories about legal acquittal and open spaces; by procuring these novels, Andy cultivates prisoners’ desire for freedom.
Themes
Two years after becoming the librarian, Andy starts sending letters to Maine’s State Senate. Stammas—now the warden—tells Andy in a condescending, fake-friendly way that state legislators won’t fund a prison library, only “more bars” and “more guards.” Andy asks Stammas to think about a tiny drip of water eroding concrete over a long period. Stammas laughs and volunteers to send the letters for Andy, provided Andy pays postage. Eight years later, the legislature sends Andy $200. Though the narrator suspects they sent the money to stop the letters, Andy writes even more—and gets money for the library every year.
The warden’s believes politicians will only fund “more bars” and “more guards” for Shawshank, not books that could cultivate the inmates’ minds—again betraying that, rhetoric aside, prison is about control rather than rehabilitation. In response, Andy compares himself to a drip of water eroding concrete. This comparison repeats a metaphor the novella has previously used, where Andy’s interest in shaping rocks, crystals, and concrete represents his persistence. This allows him to exercise agency in prison despite his lack of institutional power.
Themes
After Andy helps Hadley avoid taxes on his inheritance, guards start asking him for financial advice. He ends up helping almost all the staff. When Stammas becomes warden, Andy helps Stammas more materially. The narrator doesn’t know the details, but he does know that sometimes free people who care about certain prisoners bribe prison staff so the prisoners get better treatment, the companies that sold equipment for prison industries likely bribe prison administrators, and in the 1960s administrators are involved in drug smuggling. All this “illicit income” needs laundering—and Andy launders it.
According to the narrator, all the prison workers from the guards to the warden are accepting bribes, embezzling money, or engaging in some other “illicit” money-making activity—in other words, greed and corruption are everywhere in Shawshank.
Themes
Around 1960, Andy and the narrator—whom Andy calls “Red”—discuss the money-laundering. Andy claims not to feel guilty and suggests, humorously, it isn’t that different from the work he did before prison. When Red expresses uneasiness about the drugs, Andy points out the guards sell the drugs, not him.
At the novella’s beginning, the narrator identifies himself only by his role in prison culture, not giving his name. Here readers finally learn the narrator’s name or nickname, “Red,” because Andy uses it. This hints that Red’s friendship with the free-willed Andy may be helping Red take back his spirit and individuality from Shawshank’s crushing control. Red’s worry about Andy’s involvement in the dangerous drug trade reinforces that he’s a man with moral scruples, who’s likely not a danger to society and would be paroled under a more just correctional system. Andy’s observation that the guards are the one selling drugs highlights the corruption and absurdity of Shawshank, where the ones guarding the prisoners are themselves committing crimes.
Themes
Andy says some ineffectual people never do anything wrong, while other people will do any horrible thing for money. He asks whether anyone has ever suggested a “contract” to Red. When Red says yes, Andy says he knows Red didn’t take it, because he and Red see a “third choice” between ineffectual goodness and evil: “You balance off your walk through the hog-wallow against what it gains you.” Andy launders money; in exchange, the administrators let him do what he wants with the library, where more than 20 prisoners have read books and studied to “pass their high school equivalency exams.”
By “contract,” Andy means a contract killing; he’s asking whether anyone has requested Red arrange a murder for them. When Andy talks about traveling “through the hog-wallow”—a stereotypically dirty place—to “gain[]” something good, he’s arguing that rather than refuse to ever participate in corruption, people should calculate how much good they can do and “balance” that against how much corruption they’re participating in. Andy himself seems to believe that educating other prisoners is a good that balances out the crime he commits when he launders money for prison staff. This belief shows Andy’s moral pragmatism. This pragmatism was not in evidence at his trial, where he seemed to tell the truth even when it would hurt his case—which suggests Andy’s wrongful conviction changed him, making him less rigidly principled and more practical.
Themes
Red says Andy also gets his own cell. Andy agrees he prefers it that way. Red notes that though the prison population rose dramatically with the war on drugs in the 60s—which Red calls “ridiculous penalties for the use of a little reefer”—Andy only ever had one cellmate, a Native American man named Normaden.
Red and Andy’s exchange hints that Andy is laundering money not only to protect the prison library but to secure the privilege of a cell without a roommate—foreshadowing that Andy may have a special reason to want privacy in his cell. Red’s allusion to “ridiculous penalties” for minor drug crimes reminds readers that the U.S. criminal justice system often metes out unjust punishments.
Themes
In 1958, Red looks in the mirror, realizes he’s 40 and has lived in prison since 1938, notices gray in his red hair, and feels afraid. In 1959, a journalist goes undercover at Shawshank to investigate corruption, and Stammas flees, becoming a fugitive—but Andy isn’t punished. Later that year, a new warden arrives. For eight months, Andy receives no special treatment, and during this time his cellmate Normaden moves in. Then Andy begins working for the new administrators, and Normaden moves out again.
Since Red entered prison at age 20, by 1958 he has lived half his years in prison—indicating what a shaping force prison has been in his life. Red’s fear reminds readers that many prisoners convicted of serious crimes aren’t paroled until advanced old age—an arguably unjust practice that undercuts the stated goal of rehabilitating prisoners so they can reenter society as productive members. Here readers learn that Red has red hair—which suggests “Red” is a friendly nickname, not his given name. That a journal investigates Shawshank for corruption suggests the prison may be particularly, notoriously corrupt—yet the investigation seems to accomplish nothing, as Andy continues his money-laundering arrangement with the next warden as if nothing has happened.
Themes
At one point, Normaden—who has a speech impediment due to “a harelip and a cleft palate”—tells Red he liked Andy, who never mocked him, but that Andy didn’t want him there. Further, he wanted to leave because the cell was freezing with a “big draft.”
Normaden’s perception that Andy didn’t want a cellmate and that his cell was oddly cold and drafty foreshadows possible revelations about something secret afoot in Andy’s cell.
Themes
In 1955, Andy starts replacing the pin-up poster of Rita Hayworth with various other pin-ups, eventually including Raquel Welch—whom Andy keeps up longest, for six years—and finally Linda Ronstadt. When Red asks Andy about his attachment to the pin-ups, Andy says they represent “freedom.” He liked the Welch poster because she was on a beach, which made him feel like he could “step right through” the poster. When Red says he’s never taken that perspective on pin-ups, Andy says Red will understand later. Red concludes that later he does understand—and it reminds him of Normaden complaining about the big draft.
Actress Raquel Welch (born 1940) became a famous sex symbol after posters of her wearing a fur bikini were used to promote her 1966 film One Million Years B.C. Singer Linda Ronstadt (born 1946) released her first studio album in 1969 but became widely famous in the 1970s. The various pin-ups Andy hangs in his cell illustrate how long he’s been incarcerated, as both Welch and Ronstadt would have been young children when he was convicted in 1948. Interestingly, Andy associates the pin-ups not with sexual desire but with “freedom” and likes the Welch poster not because of Welch herself but because of the beach background. This confuses Red, who seems to think of the posters primarily as visual aids to men’s sexual desire. This passage reveals that the posters have something to do with the draft in Andy’s cell but not what—foreshadowing some revelation coming later in the novella.
Themes
In 1963, Andy temporarily loses the special quality of self-control or hope Red attributes to him. The new warden, a devout Baptist named Samuel Norton who gives every new prisoner a Bible, is the “foulest hypocrite” Red’s seen in administration. He takes up the prior wardens’ illegal businesses. In addition, he establishes an out-of-prison work program, “Inside-Out,” that he uses to embezzle money and extort bribes from businesses that want to avoid being underbid by the prison, which has access to prisoners’ unpaid labor. Andy helped Norton launder money throughout. Red suspects “what happened happened” due to Norton’s fear that Andy could inform on him if Andy were free.
That Norton is a religious hypocrite as well as an embezzler and racketeer emphasizes how corrupt Shawshank and its administrators are. In particular, Norton exploits prisoners’ unpaid labor—again suggesting that the correctional system doesn’t care about rehabilitating prisoners, only controlling or using them. Red’s ambiguous reference to “what happened” hints that Norton does something to keep Andy in prison unjustly.
Themes
In 1962, a 27-year-old career thief named Tommy Williams enters Shawshank. His wife convinces him to study for his high school equivalency while in Shawshank, so Tommy goes to Andy for books and help. Tommy, who likes Andy, can’t figure out how Andy ended up in prison—and Andy won’t tell him. Early in 1963, Tommy asks his partner on work detail about Andy’s crime. When his partner mentions that Andy was convicted of killing his wife and a golf instructor named Glenn Quentin, Tommy stops working, goes pale and says, “Glenn Quentin, oh my God.” Then a correctional officer clubs Tommy in the head and sends him to solitary for stopping work.
That Tommy likes Andy, who helps him study, illustrates the inspirational effect Andy’s mental freedom has on other prisoners at Shawshank. Tommy clearly recognizes Glenn Quentin’s name, implying that he knows something about the murder. The guard’s casual violence toward Tommy at the end of the passage once again makes clear that the prison staff don’t care about helping or rehabilitating the prisoners and will casually abuse them.
Themes
Once Tommy’s out of solitary, he asks several prisoners, including Red, about Andy’s crime. Sometime later, Tommy goes to talk to Andy. Andy, gobsmacked and hopeful, makes an appointment with Warden Norton for the next day. In the appointment, Andy tells Norton what Tommy told him: on a previous prison sentence, Tommy had a cellmate named Elwood Blatch, an extremely jumpy burglar, a “big tall guy,” “bald,” with “green eyes set way down deep in the sockets.” Blatch told Tommy he’d committed several murders. When Tommy asked who Blatch had killed, Blatch bragged that some lawyer was convicted and incarcerated in Shawshank prison because Blatch killed the lawyer’s wife and another man, a rich golfer named Glenn Quentin who Blatch thought might keep lots of money in the house.
Tommy’s story supports what the reader likely already believed—Andy, innocent of the crimes for which he was convicted, is only in Shawshank because the district attorney told a more convincing story in court than Andy could. Unfortunately, that means the U.S. criminal justice system has unjustly convicted Andy and inflicted on him, by this point, 15 years of wrongful confinement that have included multiple rapes.
Themes
Red knows why Andy wants to see Norton immediately: Blatch may still be incarcerated and thus easy to locate, or he may have been released already. Moreover, while Tommy’s account doesn’t match all the facts—Andy is a banker, not a lawyer; Blatch claimed to have stolen money from Glenn Quentin, while the police claimed no signs of robbery—Andy remembers an employee at the country club where Glenn Quentin was an instructor who matched Tommy’s description of Blatch. The employee would have known, as Blatch did, that Glenn Quentin was a golf professional and a rich man.
Now that Andy finally has a story to tell the justice system about who murdered his wife Linda and Glenn Quentin, he’s clearly hopeful that Norton will help get his conviction overturned. Given Red’s earlier, ominous allusion to “what happened,” readers may reasonably wonder whether Andy’s hope is misplaced.
Themes
Red hears about Andy and Norton’s meeting from a prisoner who eavesdrops while cleaning an office adjoining Norton’s. Andy, in a strange voice, recounts what Tommy told him. Norton expresses skepticism and suggests Tommy, who likes Andy, invented the story to please him. When Andy says he never told Tommy about the country-club employee matching Blatch’s description, Norton accuses Andy of “selective perception” and claims that even if they found Blatch, he’d never confess. Andy calls Norton “obtuse.” Shouting excitedly, he explains the club will have documents with Blatch’s name on them and other employees can testify he was there. If Tommy testifies too, Andy can get a retrial. Norton shouts for a guard and has Andy dragged to solitary, while Andy shouts, “don’t you understand it’s my life?”
Red hears about the meeting from another prisoner, not Andy, though Andy and Red are friends—which suggests Andy was so upset in the aftermath of the meeting he didn’t want to talk about it. Red’s scrupulous explanation of how he knows the things he knows, meanwhile, increases his credibility as a narrator. When Norton accuses Andy of “selective perception,” he’s using Andy’s awareness that memory is subjective against him, trying to convince him his memory is faulty. (In modern terminology, Norton is gaslighting Andy.) That the usually cool-headed Andy insults Norton (calling him “obtuse”) and shouts at him shows how desperate Andy is to be free. His question, “don’t you understand it’s my life?”, hints that he doesn’t see his existence in prison as his real life—that in regaining his freedom, he would be regaining his authentic existence.
Themes
Andy spends 20 days in solitary. Red explains that solitary confinement has a long history in Maine. In the 18th century, people were executed for serious crimes; for minor crimes, they were forced to dig a deep hole and live inside it for months, while a jailor occasionally brought them rotten food and poured water into the same bucket they used for urination. Shawshank’s solitary, meanwhile, has a single light, which turns off at 8 p.m., a bunk, and a seatless toilet. Though it’s better than living in a hole, “in situations like that, subdivisions of terrible tend to get lost.”
Red’s brief historical digression illustrates how inhumane the U.S. justice system has often been. When he says that “subdivisions of terrible seem to get lost,” he’s implicitly arguing that while prison conditions have improved over time, the improvement doesn’t really matter when the conditions are still so awful.
Themes
After getting out of solitary, Andy requests another meeting with Norton. Though Norton says no, Andy keeps requesting a meeting until, months later, Norton agrees. Andy tells Red about the conversation years later, but what happens is this: when Andy tries to reassure Norton he wouldn’t tell anyone about the money laundering if released, Norton cuts him off, threatens to close Shawshank’s library, and says he can’t pay attention to “crazy stories” like Andy’s.
Norton calling Andy’s account of Linda and Glenn’s murders “crazy” is another attempt to undermine Andy’s sense of reality (i.e. to gaslight him). That Norton interrupts Andy when Andy tries to reassure him about the money-laundering suggests Norton really is concerned his corruption will be exposed.
Themes
Andy says he’ll be getting a lawyer, because with Tommy’s testimony, he can make a case. Norton says Tommy’s been transferred to Cashman, a lower-security prison that lets prisoners on furlough to visit their families. Andy, suspecting Norton transferred Tommy to pay for his silence about Blatch, asks why Norton would do that. Norton claims he’s helped Andy out: there was an Elwood Blatch in the prison Tommy named, but he’s been paroled and can’t be located. When Andy asks whether Norton knows that prison’s warden, Norton, smirking coolly, admits he does. When Andy again asks why Norton would transfer Tommy, Norton says he hates Andy’s superior look and likes seeing it wiped off his face.
This passage implies Norton asked the warden of Blatch’s prison to parole Blatch—to prevent Andy from locating Blatch and getting a retrial. Presumably one of Norton’s motives is to keep Andy in Shawshank laundering money for him, which shows how corruption among the prison staff can cause miscarriages of justice. Yet Norton’s desire to crush Andy’s pride suggests that he has another motive: he can sense Andy’s self-respect and internal freedom, and he sadistically wants to destroy those things.
Themes
Andy says in that case, he’ll stop giving Norton free financial help. Norton replies that he’s sending Andy for solitary for 30 days and that, unless Andy keeps working for him, he’ll shut down the library, give Andy a cellmate, take his rock collection, and tell the guards to let other prisoners rape him. Andy keeps working for Norton.
Since rocks have represented Andy’s persistence throughout the novella, Norton’s ability to take Andy’s rock collection hints Norton is on the verge of breaking Andy’s spirit. Norton’s threat to let other prisoners rape Andy again is horrifying—vividly illustrating how corrupt Norton is and how unconcerned he is with any prisoner’s wellbeing. Andy’s decision to keep working for Norton shows that despite his self-possession and desire for freedom, he understands too well the power Norton has over him to defy Norton and risk more sexual assault—or a cellmate, which he definitely doesn’t want for important yet mysterious reasons.
Themes
Andy continues his routines, working in the library, finding and polishing rocks, and buying a new rock-hammer from Red in 1967. Sometimes he gives away the rocks he polishes and sculpts. Red has five, and when he looks at them, he considers “what a man can do, if he has time enough and the will to use it, a drop at a time.” Yet though Andy keeps up his routines, he talks less and suffers darker moods for four years after his confrontation with Norton.
Norton’s cruelty—which amounts to a second unjust imprisonment of Andy—hurts Andy but does not actually break his spirit. As rocks have represented Andy’s persistence throughout the novella, Andy’s decision to keep collecting rocks shows his resilience, while his gift of them to others represents how that resilience inspires his fellow prisoners. Red makes this inspirational quality of Andy’s explicit when he says that the rocks make him think about “what a man can do […] a drop at a time.” The reference to “a drop” alludes to previous mentions in the novel of water eroding rock, a metaphor for persistence getting results.
Themes
Red notices Andy beginning to feel better during the 1967 World Series, when the Boston Red Sox are playing and the prisoners track the games feverishly. Though the other prisoners become depressed after the Red Sox lose the Series, Andy keeps his improved mood. A few weeks after the Red Sox’s loss, Red sees Andy sitting in the sun holding a couple rocks. Andy invites Red to sit and gives him the rocks as gifts. They discuss that in the coming year, Red will have served 30 years. When Andy asks Red whether he believes he (Red himself) will ever be paroled, Red says it won’t happen till he’s ancient and senile.
Like many New Englanders, the prisoners in Maine’s Shawshank prison root for the Major League Baseball team the Boston Red Sox. Though Andy begins to feel better while the Red Sox are playing in the 1967 World Series, he continues feeling better after they lose—which suggests his better mood merely coincided with the Series, while some other, unknown event caused it. In this scene, Andy is handling rocks; since rocks are symbols of his persistence, this detail suggests he hasn’t given up on freedom despite Norton cruelly thwarting his plan to get a retrial. Red’s belief that he, Red, won’t be paroled until he’s ancient underscores the novella’s repeated claim that people are often released from prison too late to allow them to contribute to society again.
Themes
Andy tells Red that after prison, he’ll move to a Mexican town on the Pacific called Zihuatanejo. He claims Mexican people say the Pacific remembers nothing: “And that’s where I want to finish out my life, Red. In a warm place that has no memory.” He tells Red his plans to open a hotel there for newlyweds.
Andy wants to live somewhere with “no memory,” suggesting that—counter to Red’s earlier claim that most prisoners don’t want to think about the future--Andy is happy thinking about his future, because he has hope; he just doesn’t want to think about his past, which is full of suffering.
Themes
When Red asks where Andy will get money to start this business, Andy says there are two kinds of men: men who, when a hurricane heads toward them, assume it’ll spare their house, and men who assume it’ll tear their house down and act accordingly. When Red asks whether Andy acted accordingly, Andy says yes: after his wife Linda’s murder, a friend named Jim, who died in 1961, helped him sell his stocks. After Andy’s conviction, Jim also created a new identity for Andy—Peter Stevens—with fake documents. Red points out that creating a fake identity is a crime, so Jim must’ve been an excellent friend. Andy explains he and Jim “were in the war together, France, Germany, the occupation.” While Andy was in prison, Jim invested Andy’s savings for Peter Stevens, so that Peter Stevens is now worth approximately $370,000.
This passage reveals that Andy’s desire for freedom was so strong, he made contingency plans during his trial in case he was incarcerated. When he mentions serving with Jim “in the war,” France, Germany, and “the occupation,” the novella is referring to World War II (1939 – 1945), during which Nazi Germany invaded France. After Germany was defeated, Allied forces—including the U.S., the UK, and the USSR—occupied Germany between 1945 and 1949. Shared military service explains the strong bond of loyalty between Andy and Jim.
Themes
Red asks why Andy, with all that money, didn’t get a great lawyer like “Clarence Darrow, or whoever’s passing for him these days” to make Tommy testify. Andy explains that, with him in prison and Jim dead, he can’t access Peter Stevens’s money. He tells Red that in a town called Buxton, against a rock wall in a hayfield, Jim left a paperweight Andy once owned. Beneath the paperweight is the key to a safe deposit box rented in Peter Stevens’s name and paid out of his money by lawyers Jim hired. Inside the box are Peter Stevens’s identity documents, stock certifications, and so forth. Andy admits he worries new construction will at some point cover the field and key in concrete. When Red asks how the situation doesn’t drive Andy insane, Andy replies, “So far, all quiet on the Western front.”
Clarence Darrow (1857 – 1938) was a U.S. attorney who in 1925 famously defended a schoolteacher, John T. Scopes, accused of breaking a Tennessee law against teaching evolution in the so-called “Scopes Monkey Trial.” Red’s somewhat dated reference to Darrow illustrates that incarceration has put him out of touch with the changing culture. That the safe deposit box key is hidden near a rock wall associates the key with Andy’s hopeful persistence, symbolized by rocks throughout the novella. Andy’s comment, “all quiet on the Western front” is a colloquial phrase meaning “nothing new” or “no developments,” which derives from the title of the English translation of Erich Maria Remarque’s 1928 German novel, All Quiet on the Western Front.
Themes
When Red points out that Andy may not leave prison for a long time, Andy says he may not be in for as long as Norton believes—and, given his innocence, his Mexican hotel dream isn’t unreasonable. Then, casually, he says his hotel will need “a man who knows how to get things.” Red replies he wouldn’t survive outside of prison; Shawshank has made him “an institutional man.” When Andy claims Red’s selling himself short, Red retorts he never graduated high school. Andy replies that high school and prison don’t by themselves determine a person’s worth. When Red again protests he couldn’t survive outside prison, Andy asks him just to consider the offer.
Andy’s cryptic comment about leaving Shawshank earlier than Norton thinks is a hint Andy has a plan—whether to get a retrial or to escape somehow, readers don’t yet know. When Andy says he’ll need “a man who knows how to get things,” he’s offering Red a job, since “a man who knows who to get things” is how Red defines himself in Shawshank. By protesting he wouldn’t survive the outside world, Red reveals he suffers from self-doubt and low self-esteem due to prison’s long-term control over him.
Themes
As Andy walks off, Red marvels at how Andy’s sense of freedom makes Red “feel free.” Yet Red loses that free feeling once he’s back in his cell. That night he dreams he’s in a hayfield, trying to retrieve a key beneath a huge rock but not strong enough to move the stone, while bloodhounds bark nearby.
Andy can make Red “feel free,” demonstrating again that Andy’s desire for freedom inspires other prisoners. Since the novella associates moving, collecting, and shaping rocks with persistence, Red’s inability in his dream to move a huge rock pinning a key means that he fears he lacks the necessary persistence to leave Shawshank and survive in the free world.
Themes
This conversation gets Red on “the subject of jailbreaks.” Prisoners who escape over the wall never succeed; they’re caught in the act by searchlights or apprehended soon after because their uniforms make them conspicuous in Shawshank’s rustic environs. Once a man escaped in a laundry delivery, but the guards have gotten wise to that trick. Several men escaped while working for Norton’s Inside-Out Program: three slipped away from their correctional officer, who liked hunting, while a stag distracted him. One man, Sid Nedeau, managed to walk out unnoticed during a correctional officer shift change. Andy and Red like to joke about Nedeau; after they hear about D.B. Cooper’s airplane hijacking, Andy claims Cooper must have really been Nedeau.
D.B. Cooper is the name news outlets gave to a never-identified man who hijacked a plane flying over the U.S. in 1971. The number of escape attempts Red can name demonstrates the prisoners’ strong desire for freedom, while Red’s interest in these stories subtly suggest that the escapees’ desire for freedom resonates with him too.
Themes
Though escapes do happen, a prisoner must be extraordinarily fortunate to succeed. Red guesses 10 prisoners escaped Shawshank from the time he entered to his conversation with Andy about Zihuatanejo. He also suspects many escapees end up in other prisons, because prisoners “get institutionalized” and secretly want to stay in prison where the environment is familiar. Red believes he’s institutionalized, though Andy isn’t.
When Red says that people “get institutionalized” by prison, he seems to mean that the rigidity of prison life makes people so unused to—and ultimately afraid of—freedom that they come to desire being controlled by others. Red, a self-critical man, believes prison has made him—but not Andy—afraid of freedom.
Themes
Red thinks Andy may have a shot at escaping, but escape will be difficult for Andy in particular, because Norton is surveilling him especially and would never let him into the Inside-Out Program. Red tries to convince Andy to get a retrial, because he thinks that’s a more likely path to freedom. Yet in 1975, Andy escapes, and as of 1976, he’s still free. Red believes Andy, under the name Peter Stevens, now owns a hotel in Zihuatanejo.
Norton’s punitive surveillance of Andy emphasizes Norton’s corruption and the failure of prison as a rehabilitative institution. Yet readers learn in this passage that Andy has escaped—meaning that Andy’s overwhelming, instinctive desire for freedom eventually overcame the prison’s attempts to control him both physically and psychologically.
Themes
At 6:30 in the morning on March 12, 1975, the guards count the prisoners from Cellblock 5 on their way to breakfast and, after some confusion, realize Andy is missing. The guards contact Norton, search Shawshank, and alert the local police. No one thinks to search Andy’s cell until the evening, when Norton looks behind Andy’s pin-up poster of Linda Ronstadt and gets “one hell of a shock.”
That Norton gets “one hell of a shock” from looking behind Andy’s poster implies Andy has been hiding something important behind his posters for decades—and that no one thought to look behind them before, because everyone assumed they knew what a male prisoner was using a poster of a woman for. The pin-up posters thus represent how Andy manipulates gender stereotypes about men, concealing his real desire for freedom behind a false desire for sex.
Themes
Red hears from a prisoner who eavesdropped that, earlier that day, Norton berated the Captain of the Guards for losing Andy. Though the Captain claimed Andy wasn’t still in Shawshank, Norton shouted that no one knew exactly when Andy escaped, but he was accounted for at 9 p.m. roll call the previous night, and it was “impossible” he’d gotten clean away. He demanded the Captain bring Andy back that afternoon—but by the afternoon, Andy’s still gone. Though the guards question the prisoners, including Red, no one knows what happened. Eventually Norton storms into Andy’s cell, swipes the depleted rock collection off the windowsill (Andy took some rocks with him), and tears down the Linda Rondstadt pin-up poster in fury—revealing a big hole in the cell wall.
When Norton claims it’s “impossible” for Andy to escape, it emphasizes how difficult the escape must have been—and how cunning and persistent Andy must have been to succeed. This cunning persistence is represented by Andy’s rock-shaping hobby, which Norton ineffectually attacks when he invades Andy’s empty cell. Tearing down the pin-up poster, Norton discovers that Andy’s posters have hidden a hole in the wall—suggesting that Andy has been, with extreme persistence, digging through the wall since he first bought a poster in 1949 and using people’s assumptions about male sex drive to keep them from asking any questions about the sexy posters.
Themes
Norton, out of his mind with anger, demands the Captain climb into the hole. The Captain refuses. When Norton threatens to fire him, the Captain offers Norton his gun—and Red imagines he can “hear Andy Dufresne laughing.” Eventually, though, Norton and the Captain find a young, thin guard to climb into the hole. From inside, the guard calls out that it smells terrible. Norton orders him to keep going. The guard starts yelling that “it’s shit” and vomits loudly. Red, unable to stay quiet, bursts into guffaws. Norton sends Red to solitary for 15 days, bur in solitary, Red keeps laughing and thinking about Andy, free and traveling toward his dream.
When Red imagines Andy “laughing” at the Captain who won’t go in the hole—and when Red himself laughs at the guard disgusted by the “shit” inside it—the novella makes clear Andy’s escape must have been revolting. The revoltingness emphasizes how much Andy wanted to be free: he was willing to crawl through “shit” for it. When, despite solitary confinement, Red keeps laughing as he imagined Andy doing, it shows how Andy inspires positive, free feelings in other prisoners despite their physical unfreedom.
Themes
After leaving solitary, Red hears from other prisoners what happened. The guard in the hole found a porcelain sewer pipe with a hole knocked into it and a rock-hammer abandoned nearby. Andy had entered the pipe and crawled through it into the creek where it “emptied.” He’d likely found out about the pipe and the creek by sneaking a look at Shawshank’s blueprints. Later, searchers found his Shawshank uniform about two miles from the creek. Despite major news coverage, no one came forward to say they’d seen him fleeing across the surrounding land. Red speculates Andy headed to Buxton.
Up to this point, the novella has linked Andy’s rock-collecting hobby to his desire for freedom only in that he pursues both consistently. When readers learn that he abandoned his rock-hammer in the wall near a sewer pipe, however, it suggests Andy has been using the rock-hammer to dig to freedom—making the connection between the symbol of his persistence (rocks, rock-collecting) and his desire for freedom literal and practical.
Themes
Much to Red’s delight, a defeated Norton quits three months after Andy escapes, leaving Shawshank trudging “like an old con shuffling down to the infirmary for codeine pills.” The Captain of the Guards takes over as warden. Red imagines Norton going regularly to church but wondering how Andy bested him. Red internally replies: “Some have got it, Sam. And some don’t, and never will.”
In a major role reversal, Andy is now free, while Norton is walking “like an old con” in pain. This reversal suggests that freedom relies not only on external circumstances, but in a person’s internal sense of freedom—their recognition of their own agency and desire to exercise it. Red may be referring to this recognition and desire when he talks about the ”it” that Andy has and Norton doesn’t.
Themes
Red speculates about how, exactly, Andy went about escaping. Again he remembers Andy’s old cellmate Normaden, who complained about the cell’s draftiness. Red thinks having a cellmate must have slowed Andy’s progress; otherwise, Andy might have escaped “before Nixon resigned.” He guesses Andy began tunneling in 1949, after he asked for the Rita Hayworth pin-up poster—Andy’s strange demeanor, which Red took for sexual “embarrassment,” was actually nervous pleasure at the thought of escape.
U.S. president Richard Nixon served from 1969 to 1974; when Red suggests Andy could have escaped “before Nixon resigned” if not for Normaden, he's suggesting Andy could have escaped between one and six years earlier. Reflecting, Red realizes how he misinterpreted Andy due to stereotypical, gendered assumptions, mistaking Andy’s excitement at the thought of freedom for sexual “embarrassment.” Of course, Andy himself weaponized these stereotypes to hide his true goal; the pin-up posters thus symbolize both Andy’s desire for freedom and his ability to conceal that desire when necessary, just as the posters hid the hole in his wall.
Themes
Curious about Andy’s escape, Red writes to a University of Maine historian and learns Andy’s cellblock was constructed as a WPA project from 1934 to 1937, when concrete was comparatively primitive. Red guesses Andy’s interest in rocks—which suited his “patient, meticulous nature” and likely intensified in prison, to pass the years—led him to study the prison walls. Red imagines Andy etching words onto his wall, realizing it was “interestingly weak,” and buying the pin-up poster to hide his explorations. When Red procured the rock-hammer for Andy, he’d supposed a man would need centuries to burrow through a wall with it—but Andy only needed to reach the sewer pipe, and it still took him 27 years, working only at night.
Red believes himself an “institutional man” unable to live in freedom; yet his intense interest in Andy’s escape hints Andy has awakened Red’s dormant desire to be free. WPA is an acronym for Works Progress Administration, a U.S. federal agency created during the Great Depression, which began in 1929 and continued throughout the 1930s; the novella is suggesting that a historical peculiarity, “interestingly weak” concrete used by the WPA, enabled Andy’s escape. Once again, the novella emphasizes Andy’s persistence, symbolized by rocks and concrete, both through his choice of a hobby requiring a “patient, meticulous nature” and through stating explicitly that he worked at night for 27 years for a chance at freedom.
Themes
Wondering how Andy disposed of the concrete he dug from the wall, Red recalls seeing Andy in the exercise yard with sand swirling around his feet. He speculates Andy filled his pant cuffs with crushed concrete and dumped them out “cupful by cupful.” While various wardens thought Andy was helping them to protect his library, he was really doing it because he wanted to avoid a cellmate. Prior to 1950, when he started helping guards with their finances and tax-laundering for crooked wardens, he probably bribed a few guards not to search his cell too thoroughly.
The image of Andy disposing of concrete “cupful by cupful” Illustrates how slowly he worked and—once again—how persistent he was in his pursuit of freedom. Red’s speculation that Andy likely bribed the guards, meanwhile, emphasizes yet again the corruption everywhere in Shawshank.
Themes
Red guesses that Andy discovered the shaft inside the prison wall in 1967, around the time he first mentioned Zihuatanejo to Red. This discovery would have made escape much more viable, but it would also have raised the stakes for Andy. Red imagines what “ghastly irony” would have occurred if Andy had actually gotten paroled—guards would have cleaned out Andy’s cell and discovered the hole, and Andy would have been thrown right back in prison.
Andy continued digging despite the “ghastly irony” that would have occurred if he’d been paroled, which suggests he didn’t believe he would be paroled in time to make any kind of life out of his remaining years—so he escaped rather than wait. This choice reveals Andy’s desire to exercise agency. It also emphasizes, yet again, that prison frequently fails to parole ‘rehabilitated’ prisoners until they are so old or sick that they can no longer contribute to society as they are nominally supposed to do.
Themes
Pondering why Andy only escaped in 1975 if he found the shaft in 1967, Red guesses Andy proceeded carefully to avoid detection—but also, prison institutionalizes people until they “love” the restraints imposed on them. On Red’s prison work detail, he was only allowed to use the bathroom at 25 minutes past the hour—and after a while, that was the only time he wanted to use the bathroom. Andy may have delayed escape due to “that institutional syndrome.” Also, he was likely terrified of trying and failing to get free, whether because the pipe was blocked or because the key to the safe deposit box was no longer under the paperweight in Buxton—because a kid or a bird had taken it. Yet at last, Andy escaped.
Red’s story about only needing to use the bathroom at certain times, as well as using the word “love” to describe prisoners’ relationship to prison rules, illustrates how badly prison can damage people’s instinct for freedom—how strong “that institutional syndrome” can be. Red has admitted a couple times that Andy is a larger-than-life legend, yet Red’s speculation that Andy suffered from a little of that “syndrome” suggests that Red also sees Andy as a real human being, capable of weakness, and thus increases Red’s credibility as a narrator of Andy’s story.
Themes
Red doesn’t know exactly what happened to Andy after his escape, but in 1975, he receives a blank postcard from McNary, Texas, a town on the border with Mexico. Red is convinced Andy passed through McNary into Mexico.
Andy’s decision to communicate with Red after escaping, despite potential risks, shows the depth of their friendship—and may hint Andy is actively trying to encourage Red’s own stifled desire for freedom.
Themes
Red says the postcard concludes his story—which he began writing when he received the postcard and is finishing in January 1976. Musing that “writing about yourself” brings up endless memories, he claims Andy’s story is his own story, because Andy is “the part of [Red] they could never lock up.” He notes some other prisoners remember Andy the way he does; they all feel glad Andy’s free yet sad he’s gone from their lives. Thinking his story’s over, Red notes he’s “glad” to have “told it” and—addressing Andy directly—asks Andy to “feel free” for him.
At the novella’s beginning, Red claimed he was writing about Andy and speaking about himself only incidentally. Now he admits he’s “writing about [him]self,” which shows that writing Andy’s story has helped Red understand his own thoughts and desires. Despite being a supposed “institutional man,” Red too has some of the internal freedom Andy possesses in spades, “the part […] they could never lock up.” Yet Red still doesn’t seem to believe he can have external freedom directly; he casts Andy as a kind of mascot who can “feel free” on Red’s behalf while Red remains incarcerated.
Themes
In 1977, Red—to his own surprise—resumes writing the story in a hotel in Portland after his parole at age 58. He considered destroying the manuscript before his release, because parolees are searched and the manuscript mentions Zihuatanejo, where he believes Andy to be hiding. Instead, he switched out the name Zihuatanejo for a coastal town in Peru and brought the manuscript out hidden in his rectum, the way Andy once smuggled money in.
Red chose to hide his manuscript of Andy’s story in his rectum rather than destroy it. This is an extreme action, which suggests the story is very important and inspirational to Red. Red copied this smuggling method from Andy, showing that Red has learned some methods for exercising agency from retelling Andy’s legend.
Themes
For two months after his release, Red works bagging groceries at a supermarket, disoriented by the noise and pace of life outside prison, unwillingly aroused by the presence of women, and wishing he didn’t feel the urge to ask his supervisor’s permission before using the bathroom. Red senses his “servile” demeanor revolts his young supervisor; Red wants to explain that prison turns a man into a “dog,” but he knows his supervisor won’t grasp what he means. Red feels tempted to commit some petty crime so he can go back to prison. But he remembers all the effort Andy expended to get free, and he thinks returning to prison “would be like spitting in the face of everything [Andy] had worked so hard to win back.”
As a former prisoner in the free world, Red clearly feels a lot of self-loathing, calling himself “servile” and a “dog.” Prison is still controlling him on some level, because it influences the narrative Red tells about himself. Yet Andy’s legendary example—how he “worked so hard” to be free—inspires Red to persevere, illustrating that stories can influence reality by giving people models for the behaviors and ideals they want to imitate.
Themes
Instead, Red starts hitchhiking to Buxton, searching for a paperweight in a hayfield. On April 23rd, he finds the rock, picks it up, and discovers an envelope with his name written on it in Andy’s handwriting. Red takes the envelope back to his room and reads it. In the letter, Andy invites Red to come help with his “project” and tells him: “Remember that hope is a good thing, Red, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.” Andy has also left Red $1000 in 50-dollar bills.
Andy is vague enough about his “project” that if someone other than Red discovered the letter, they wouldn’t be able to track Andy down—yet Red knows Andy is referring to the hotel in Zihuatanejo. Andy’s praise of hope as “the best of things” suggests that in order to freely choose the future you want, you have to first imagine a positive future for yourself—and imagining a positive future for yourself is essentially what hope is.
Themes
In the hotel in Portland—where Red is technically violating parole—he itemizes his belongings: the manuscript, some luggage, and all the money Andy sent minus the little Red spent buying writing paper and some cigarettes. Though Red deliberates for a moment about his course of action, he ultimately decides he has “two choices. Get busy living or get busy dying.” He writes down his intention to pack his manuscript, check out of the hotel, go to a bar, take two shots (one for himself, one for Andy), and then buy bus tickets all the way to McNary, Texas. From McNary, he plans to enter Mexico. He feels “excitement only a free man can feel,” hoping that Andy’s in Zihuatanejo, Red can reach him, and they’ll be reunited. He concludes: “I hope.”
Until this point, Red has described himself as an “institutional man” who could never survive in the free world. Yet now he compares his half-life as a parolee to “get[ting] busy dying,” whereas total freedom with Andy would be “living.” To Red, freedom is life. By choosing freedom, Red turns himself into a ”free man,” someone who exercises agency to bring about the future he wants and thus someone capable of “hope.” By having “institutional man” Red break parole to join Andy in total freedom, the novella suggests that institutions like prison can suppress the human instinct for freedom but ultimately never destroy it.
Themes
