40 pages • 1 hour read
Stephen KingRita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption
Fiction | Novella | Adult | Published in 1982A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Institutional Injustice and Corruption
In many of his works, such as Firestarter (1980), The Running Man (1982), The Long Walk (1979), and The Stand (1978), King explores the concept of corrupt authority. Often, a protagonist who is fundamentally good is treated unfairly and violently by a higher body, such as a toxic government or institution. In the process, they prove their mettle and resilience. Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption falls into this tradition. Andy Dufresne is an innocent man, his trial an unjust spectacle. It is manipulated by a corrupt district attorney who cares more about political clout than justice. The system fails Andy. The media has determined that Andy is guilty; therefore, the DA needs to prove this rather than allow for the truth or risk compromising his own ambitions.
Warden Norton represents the worst of institutional corruption. Norton uses the prison as a personal money-making operation for himself. As Red says: “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 profits off the drugging of prisoners. He oversees an illicit drug-trade operation within the prison as prisoners are provided codeine pills, taking a cut from the distribution of pills. At Shawshank, the prisoners fear the guards. Many of the prisoners are frequently beaten, clubbed, injured, or sent off to solitary where they spend anywhere from 15-30 days.
Norton is Andy’s foil, or a character who illuminates another character through opposing qualities. In contrast to Norton’s villainy, Andy embodies goodness. He creates a system to help prisoners receive an education, and helps Red make a life for himself after prison. He is so good, in fact, that he has a hard time recognizing evil. For example, he is incredulous that Warden Norton doesn’t want to pursue Tommy’s information about his wife’s real killer. Andy’s resolve is tested by the warden, who sees Andy as a threat to his own authority and power.
Like in King’s book Firestarter, Andy is a protagonist facing overwhelming odds. As part of his journey, he will subvert institutional corruption to find freedom.
The Resilience of the Human Spirit
Through Andy, King shows how it’s possible to triumph in the face of extreme oppression and unfairness. Andy is wrongfully convicted, brutalized in prison, and spends years serving time for a crime he didn’t commit. In spite of this, he largely maintains his composure and optimism. Instead of giving up, he acts to help others, such as when developing the prison library. Andy demonstrates a high degree of resilience. Red points out that Andy seems to be untroubled by the circumstances of his life. Red attributes this to “[a] sense of his own worth, maybe, or a feeling that he would be the winner in the end […] or maybe it was only a sense of freedom, even inside these goddamned gray walls. It was a kind of inner light he carried around with him” (41).
This idea—that one can find freedom within confinement—harkens back to existential philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre wrote how freedom was not dictated by external factors, but by human agency. For example, he writes how he experienced freedom even during World War II, when Nazi Germany occupied France. Sartre believed that the courage to resist suffering was “the secret of a man” (Gordon, Noah J. “Paris Alive: Jean-Paul Sartre on World War II.” Theatlantic.com).
Like Sartre, Andy pushes against suffering and in doing so, realizes his humanity. In spite of the horrors he faces, Andy doesn’t really change. Even during the four years following the warden’s refusal to help him, Andy “never became exactly like the others” (70). In this way, Andy remains free.
His escape also embodies his resilience. As Red speculates, it would have taken Andy years to carve out the tunnel that led to the drainpipe. To pull that off, Andy needed to be patient and persistent. The escape, Red speculates, would have been harrowing, as demonstrated by the guard vomiting when coming upon the pipe. Andy would have had to enter into that very pipe, inhaling the stench of sewage.
Red also demonstrates resilience. Like Andy, he faces adversity. In his case, he is unable to reintegrate back into society after his release. Against overwhelming odds, he searches for Andy’s box. Finding the box, which is hidden in a hayfield, is a “fool’s errand […] but so is chipping at a blank concrete wall for twenty-seven years” (108). Like Andy’s escape, finding the box is a longshot—but this does not keep Red from trying. Red refuses to give up the search. When he finds the box, King shows how persistence is rewarded. The box contains money that affords Red the opportunity to travel to Mexico and reunite with his friend. King shows that—even after years of suffering—one can find hope through the power of the human spirit.
The Power of Hope and Friendship
Red’s outlook on life undergoes a transformation as the novella progresses. At the novella’s beginning, Red is somewhat cynical, and doesn’t contemplate the future. For example, when Andy asks him if he ever worries that his smuggling operation will be discovered, Red says: “I never worry […] In a place like this there’s no percentage in it” (20). Thinking of the future in any way while in Shawshank is a futile exercise, as one has no real control. Red suggests a deterministic view of life, one in which whatever happens is bound to happen; therefore, it makes no sense to consider different possibilities.
Initially, Andy exemplifies how hope is dangerous. He allows himself to hope when Tommy Williams reveals that he knows who killed Andy’s wife. With figurative language, Andy describes hope as a feral animal. He personifies it, making it something sentient and tactile:
He said it was as if Tommy had produced a key which fit a cage in the back of his mind, a cage like his own cell. Only instead of holding a man, that cage held a tiger, and that tiger’s name was Hope. Williams had produced the key that unlocked the cage and the tiger was out, willy-nilly, to roam his brain (56).
This hope proves to be as dangerous as Andy fears when the warden refuses to investigate Tommy’s claims and banishes Andy to solitary.
However, even though the tiger represents danger, it also represents force of will. Ultimately, this motivates Andy’s escape.
When Red sees the return of Andy’s composure after a few years of brooding, Red begins to truly transform. His cynical determinism is replaced by the idea that one can exercise will to effect change. He slowly discovers the possibility of his own redemption. The power of hope—illustrated by Andy’s demeanor and especially in his escape—impresses upon Red. Ever since his conviction and imprisonment, Red has given up, yet through Andy, he learns to persevere. Unlike Andy, Red committed murder and lives with guilt. Through their friendship, Red recognizes the possibility for a second change.
Red learns that one can be free if one sees themselves as free. When Andy discusses his plan to open a business in Mexico, Red reflects: “And he strolled off, as if he were a free man who had just made another free man a proposition. And for awhile just that was enough to make me feel free. Andy could do that. He could make me forget for a time that we were both lifers” (78). Red’s statement illustrates the redemptive power of friendship. His relationship with Andy makes him feel free, even though, at this point in the novella, he is not. Andy represents the power of hope, and Red accesses it through their friendship.
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