In Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, rocks, crystals, and concrete represent Andy Dufresne’s persistence, which he uses to dominate the prison environment and to inspire others. Early in the novella, convict and contraband-smuggler Red compares the process of a prisoner getting parole after repeated hearings to “a river eroding a rock;” thus, the novella associates freedom with both persistence and rock-shaping. Later, Andy uses a similar comparison to describe the endless letters he writes to the Maine state legislature trying to secure funding for the prison library: the letters are water droplets falling “once every year for a million years” and the legislature is “a block of concrete”—though the water seems to have no power, eventually the concrete will erode.
Andy first approaches Red in Shawshank prison’s exercise yard because Andy wants a rock-hammer, which he plans to use to collect beautiful rocks in the prison environs. To prove to Red he’s serious, Andy sifts through the exercise-yard dirt and uncovers a quartz with a “milky glow.” The quartz touches Red emotionally, because he associates it with unfenced outdoor areas, and he agrees to get Andy the rock-hammer. Thus the reader sees how Andy refuses to let prison destroy his humane appreciation for beauty, and how that refusal touches other prisoners. Later, in thanks, Andy sends Red two pieces of polished quartz. Given the labor Andy must have expended finding and polishing the quartz, Red feels “awe for the man’s brute persistence”—so that the novella explicitly connects Andy’s shaping of rocks and crystals to his indomitable personality.
Eventually, Andy escapes from prison through a hole he’s dug in his concrete cell wall over decades using two rock-hammers Red has procured for him. Andy’s escape makes literal the connection between his interest in rock, crystals, and concrete; his persistence; and his ability to dominate his environment. Since Andy gives some of his rocks to Red—and since, after being paroled, Red eventually decides to join Andy in Mexico rather than commit another crime and return to prison—the rocks also symbolize how Andy’s persistence inspires others to persist as well.
Rocks, Crystals, and Concrete Quotes in Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption
It was a silly idea, and yet . . . seeing that little piece of quartz had given my heart a funny tweak. I don’t know exactly why; just an association with the outside world, I suppose. You didn’t think of such things in terms of the yard. Quartz was something you picked out of a small, quick-running stream.
How much work went into creating those two pieces? Hours and hours after lights-out, I knew that. First the chipping and shaping, and then the almost endless polishing and finishing with those rock-blankets. Looking at them, I felt the warmth that any man or woman feels when he or she is looking at something pretty, something that has been worked and made—that’s the thing that really separates us from the animals, I think—and I felt something else, too. A sense of awe for the man’s brute persistence.
He discovered a hunger for information on such small hobbies as soap-carving, woodworking, sleight of hand, and card solitaire. He got all the books he could on such subjects. And those two jailhouse staples, Erie [sic] Stanley Gardner and Louis L’Amour. Cons never seem to get enough of the courtroom or the open range.
I’ve still got them, and I take them down every so often and think about what a man can do, if he has time enough and the will to use it, a drop at a time.
Rocks, Crystals, and Concrete Symbol Timeline in Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption
