Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption Themes

Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption shows how the prison environment can steal two kinds of freedom: it can steal prisoners’ external freedom by controlling every aspect of their environment, and it can steal their internal freedom by teaching them to tolerate or even desire being controlled. Indeed, it suggests that only by protecting their internal freedom can prisoners keep their dignity and thrive after leaving prison. The novella’s narrator, Red, is nominally telling…

In Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, stories produce reality. Memories are stories people tell about the past, hopes are stories people tell about the future, and people act based on their memories and hopes—so stories have great power. The novella itself is a story the narrator, Red, tells about a man he met in prison, Andy Dufresne. Andy was convicted for two murders he didn’t commit because the prosecution was able…

Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption represents the world as a corrupt place, where people can become entirely corrupt, protect their purity but remain ineffectual, or accommodate some corruption to achieve good ends without becoming entirely corrupt themselves. The novella’s ending suggests the third path, accommodation, is best. In the novella, corruption is everywhere. One protagonist, a banker named Andy Dufresne, is wrongfully imprisoned for murder on circumstantial evidence—in part because the district attorney…

In Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, the U.S. criminal justice and correctional systems neither dispense justice nor provide rehabilitation—the novella shows how these high-minded ideals have nothing to do with how the systems work in practice. The novella’s plot turns on an initial injustice: Andy Dufresne is wrongly convicted of double homicide on circumstantial evidence because the prosecuting district attorney wants to use the high-profile case to further his political career. Once inside…