When Red Meets the Big Blue

Warning: this blog may contain spoilers if you have not yet seen the film.


I have fond memories of watching The Shawshank Redemption for the first time with my Dad and I can clearly remember being captivated by the narrative. The film is based on the Stephen King novel Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption: Hope Springs Eternal (that I have yet to read), which follows the story of main protagonist Andy Dufresne (played by Tim Robbins) and narrated by his friend Ellis Boyd ‘Red’ Redding (played by Morgan Freeman).

As mentioned on the Episode 1 podcast, the film is fondly received by many and is often found topping the IMDB best film list. Whether you like or dislike the movie, it is nonetheless evocative, eliciting a cathartic emotional response; you may call this manipulative, but isn’t it the function of all art to ask the audience to question the reality presented before them? The whole of the Warden’s criminal enterprise could represent this as it is, in Andy’s words ‘a figment of my imagination’. In real life, we expect the justice system to uphold the law, but in Shawshank prison, the organisation is corrupt. This reversal of expectation is echoed when Andy is talking with Red in the library – ‘On the outside I was an honest man, I had to come to prison to become a crook.’

As a novice viewer, fellow scribbler Beckie Lees loved the movie and Sally Porter as an informed spectator examines how the film offers a negative and damaging stereotype in its portrayal of women in the given patriarchal society (obviously taking into consideration the limited chance of the representation of women, given that the movie is set in men’s jail) whereas Nick Saward focuses on the cinematography – the ECUs (extreme close ups) to the sweeping aerial shots. Attitudes to film necessarily change over time, when cultural hegemony is overturned and although shot in the 1990s, the film feels both of its time (set in the 1940s-60s) and yet a timeless quality pervades the chronicle, possibly due to the combination of the unvarying prison setting and the modulated delivery of the text when there is ‘nothing left but all the time in the world’.

As a repeat offender myself (love a good pun), I always see something different in the film – I suppose that this is the nature of watching the medium of film as a format, as your own life experiences change, it irrevocably changes the way you view movies because your perspective has changed. For example, when I was studying drama at university, I found myself in awe of the nuanced performances of the cast (and I still am), especially that of Robbins and Freeman, as you can literally see the subtextual story unfolding through their eyes, movements or the hint of a smile. Then when I started my career as a librarian, I was fascinated by the freedom that could be discovered between the pages of a book, which Andy strives to provide with access and diversity to the inmates at Shawshank. The library is a place of solace and hope, a place where the much loved Brooks’ name was immortalised above the door (a more befitting tribute than the ultimate ‘Brooks was ‘ere’ epitaph) and a place where Tommy Williams could dream of a better tomorrow for his family (achieving his high school equivalency, something that evaded him on the outside).

Having re-watched The Shawshank Redemption again this weekend, I could echo the sentiments of others and talk about the universal themes that are associated with the film and attraction to an audience – truth, innocence, guilt, injustice and brutality but I find that I am distracted by one fact, we are told Andy’s story, but it is never from his point of view; there is always an outside perspective, Red’s voice. And when you examine Andy as a character, you realise that it is all like a
game of chess, the pieces are all moving around him (often under his direction), it is just that no-one has figured out his strategy yet (referring both to the prison escape and the ultimate reckoning of the other characters).

The truth is that Andy is innocent, he does not need to be redeemed; he has suffered numerous brutal injustices (from the justice system, the ‘Sisters’ and the prison hierarchy), yet in his final missive to the Warden, he stated that ‘Salvation lies within’. Now this can be interpreted in a few ways – this sentence is written in a copy of the Holy Bible in which hid the rock hammer that Andy used to escape the walls of his cell – salvation could therefore represent faith in the written word or in the physical instrument of his freedom housed between these pages, or maybe, just maybe, it could reference something entirely different.

Just like in real life, some people find solace in their beliefs (whatever faith, religion or atheism this may be) or others find comfort in the routine and toiling at work but in this context, I believe that ‘Salvation lies within’ alludes that deliverance can only be found within us, in the same place that hope is found – therefore, the only hope of salvation is from within oneself. The book is subtitled Hope Springs Eternal but Andy is innocent and hope never fails him (even when the Warden is being ‘obtuse’), so who then needs to find redemption? It is not the innocent man but the guilty that requires redemption, perhaps then ‘the only guilty man in Shawshank’ - Red, our narrator, is the one that the story is actually about. He is stuck in a self-perpetuating cycle, seen before the parole board annually asserting that he is a rehabilitated and changed man but it is only when he believes that all hope is gone that his freedom is granted – ‘Hope is the last thing to die, they say’.

Red finds himself outside of the prison walls but he still remains a caged man in a world he barely recognises (working a menial job and reporting for parole) until he visits a unique place – a stone wall next to an old oak tree (symbolism abounds here; the stone wall representing the prison and shackles of his old life versus the growth of life and knowledge presented by the tree). In a reversal of fortune, Andy then provides the instrument of Red’s ultimate escape (some money) which is found buried beneath volcanic glass (more imagery; the volcano as a symbol of change and the glass to see clearly by, anyone?). Red then uses his freedom to seek out his friend and to see the endless colour blue of the Pacific Ocean. So in a sense, it is not just Andy’s narrative that drives the tale and brings the audience repeatedly back to watch events unfold, the redemption found at Shawshank is quintessentially Red’s story.


If you liked The Shawshank Redemption, you will love: The Great Escape, The Last Castle or Cool Hand Luke