“Remember that hope is a good thing Red, in fact the best of things. And no good thing ever dies”.


This line just about captures Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank redemption, just about, because the emotion you feel well inside you when you read Stephen King in this book cannot be captured in words entirely. And it is for making me feel like this that I salute this man. For the integrity and oneness of thought that has been pursued, for the single mindedness. For bringing out the heroic in man, in the form of a spirit unmarred by life’s unfairness. For Andy Dufresne. For Red. For lines like
“Fear can hold you prisoner. But hope will set you free”.

“Get busy living or get busy dying”.

For a spirit that is not bogged down by years spent in the confines of prison for a crime not committed, captured beautifully in the lines:

“He wore his freedom like an invisible coat, something that the walls of the prison did not manage to take off in time”.

“You need music so that you don’t forget, that there are places in this world not made out of stone... that there is something inside that they can’t get to, that they can’t touch, that’s yours”.

The novel is about a man, Andrew Dufresne, who is falsely, convicted for the murder of his wife and her lover. The story unfolds in a in a fictitious prison in Maine, Shawshank from which the novel gets its name. The story is an account told by Andrew’s inmate in prison, Ellis ‘Red’ Redding. Andy to him is more like a phenomenon than another man serving time, because he brings to the place, a sense of hope and life, something which, in his own words, the walls of the prison were taking out of him. As the novel proceeds, it gives a dispassionate yet gritting account about Andy’s struggle in prison against all the horrors, for decades and his ultimate triumph over what already looks like his foregone fate.


The book is surprisingly small for an account of thirty years of a man’s life. But they brevity of the book underscores the underlying intention of the writer, that of showing that there was nothing significantly different in the days that Andy spent in prison, each day was as monotonous as the previous, the posters of the women adorning his prison cell wall (Rita Hayworth being the first one) the only indicator of the passage of time. But what stays with the protagonist all the time is the undying hope that he will get out of this place some day, and live, a free man by the beach side. He one day tells Red that he wants to feel the sand by the seaside and the sun on his face, at a place far away from here. He even knows the place he wants to spend the rest of his life at, Zihuatanejo, New Mexico.

It is a simple story of the triumph of will over destiny, it instills you with hope (the novel’s last line being the culmination – I hope). It makes you feel there are things in life worth living for, the ultimate being you. It is one of those books that justify the writer’s intention of writing it. It is the best tribute to the best emotion of man – hope.

For more trivia on the movie (that I haven’t reviewed) follow the like:
Shawshank Redemption – The movie.