Introduction

• 
  The puzzle deepens. Why is he so quiet?
  
• 
  Rock hammer = foreshadowing of his escape method.
  

• 
  The hammer is the first joke – but not yet.
  

Red warns him of surprise inspections = signpost for later.

"Name’s Red."

"Why do they call you that?"

"Maybe it’s because I’m Irish."

• 
  Another joke to relieve the heavy atmosphere – the character in the original story was Irish.
  

• 
  Red's academic detachment gives a whimsical air of reminiscence to the film, the narrator’s angle of story telling being as if he is writing an autobiography, looking back down the years. The unusual narrative voice makes this prison drama different.
  

• 
  Because we know of Andy via Red, it distances us from the protagonist and surrounds him with a mystical air. It also creates intimacy with Red.
  

Andy's request is smuggled into the prison through a load of laundry at the loading dock, passed to Red in his new stack of clean sheets and blankets, and then distributed to Andy through Brooks, the prison librarian delivering books to each cell.

In the prison laundry room during a typical day, Andy is summoned to fetch some hexlite from the stock area. There, he is assaulted by Bogs Diamond and two other men (the Sisters) who taunt him and beat him senseless: "That's it. You fight. It's better that way." According to Red, "prison is no fairy-tale world" and the vulnerable newcomer is repeatedly victimised (and gang raped?) during his first two years.

VO

I wish I could tell you that Andy fought the good fight and the sisters let him be. I wish I could tell you that, but prison is no fairy tale world. He never said who did it but we all knew. Things went on like that for a while. Prison life consists of routine, and then more routine. Every so often, Andy would show up with fresh bruises. The Sisters kept at him. Sometimes he was able to fight 'em off, sometimes not. And that's how it went for Andy. That was his routine.

Commentary

Shots of the smuggling operation. Red sees the rock hammer and smiles:

"It would take a man about 600 years to tunnel under the walls with one of these."

• 
  So the puzzle deepens further as Red dismisses the very method Andy will use to escape.
  

Andy is set up. The 3 "sisters" corner him where he works in the laundry. Their name implies friendliness, but the actuality is quite different.

• 
  More irony.
  

• 
  The director spares us the buggery and much of the beatings. We see two lots of bashing.
  

• 
  Time is unveiling slowly via the voice over.
  
• 
  Time is passing: it snows; Andy appears with new injuries; and with them healed.
  

After two years of imprisonment, the worst in Red's memory for Andy, Red and Andy are selected from volunteers to begin a week's work ("outdoor detail") to resurface the roof of the licence-plate factory.

EXT. ROOF – DAY

In the fresh air of the outdoors - without walls, fences, or bars - while the cons pour and spread bubbling tar on the roof, Captain Hadley complains bitterly about government taxes that he will owe after receiving an inheritance from his rich brother's estate. Hadley has been left $35,000 and most of that will go in tax.

"Uncle Sam, he puts his hand in your shirt and squeezes your tit till it's purple."

Andy overhears, saunters over to the Captain and asks, "Mr Hadley, do you trust your wife?" Furious with his audacity, Hadley grabs Andy and jerks him toward the edge of the roof to throw him off, until ex-banker Andy explains quickly:

Andy is saved by getting an outside detail.

CUT to Norton in the middle of Red’s VO to give the reason for the detail. The licence-plate factory roof needs resurfacing and Red fixes it (packet of cigarettes per man) so that Andy joins him in the work squad.

One of the guards expresses his sorrow at the death of Hadley’s brother, but Hadley, in a pertinent character revelation, says, "I’m not. He was an asshole."

Effective overhead shot shows Andy precariously balanced, with people beneath seeming minuscule. The tension is high; Andy is so close to death.

TRACK to a level MS of Andy over Hadley's shoulder.

Blue sky, green fields and trees can be seen - things are looking better for him.

"You’re that smart banker what killed his wife, aren’t ya?"

• 
  The poor language and grammar suggest that he is not well educated and also not very intelligent.
  

Immediate, sudden CUT to a beer being swilled. "And that’s how it came to pass."

• 
  The Biblical language used strengthens the feeling that we are witnessing the rebirth of a people via prophet Andy, who has come to show them the way to rise above their sinful world. In some ways, the event is like the Sermon on the Mount! He has brought the Good News.
  

Red thinks that Andy was so bold in asking for the beers just to feel human again, rather than to win friends. Red comments on Hadley: "The colossal prick even managed to sound magnanimous." Soft music, relaxed almost.

EXT. YARD – DAY

CUT to Red and Andy playing draughts. Andy offers to teach Red to play chess - a "civilised, strategic" game that Andy relishes but Red hates. Andy's love of chess and Red's preference for draughts highlights a difference of character: Andy is slow, methodical and deep-thinking, whereas Red lives in the present. Andy asks Red to get some alabaster and soapstone rocks from outside the prison yard to be carved into chess pieces.

"The years I got. What I don't have are the rocks."

INT. CELL – NIGHT

In his bunk later that night, Andy carves a chessman for his new chess set - a noble-looking knight. With one end of his rock-hammer, he carefully scratches his name into the concrete wall, adding his mark to the other names there. The ease with which the plaster comes away suggests something to Andy, but what, we are not told. We can guess. More suspense.

CUT to the film Gilda (1946) being projected for the prisoners in the auditorium – Andy has already seen it three times that month. The film clip begins when casino owner Ballin Mundson (George Macready) shows off his singing "canary", his new wife Gilda (Rita Hayworth) to his right-hand man Johnny Farrell (Glenn Ford).

In an anxious tone during the screening, Andy makes his request: "Can you get her?" Distracted by Rita flinging back her red mane of hair, Red replies: "It would take a few weeks... I don't have her stuffed down the front of my pants right now, I'm sorry to say. But I'll get her. Relax."

On his way out of the auditorium, Andy is again ambushed by the Sisters and dragged into the projectionist's booth. Although he fights back valiantly, breaking Rooster's nose with a heavy film reel, he is threatened with a sharp steel spike if he doesn't perform oral sex for them. Using his wits, Andy counters with a description of his strong bite reflex: "Anything you put in my mouth you're going to lose." Instead of sexually brutalising him, they "beat him within an inch of his life. Andy spends a month in the infirmary. Bogs spends a week in the hole."

When Bogs returns to his cell after a week in solitary confinement and suddenly flips his light on, Captain Hadley is there to pummel the predator and turn him into a vegetable. It is left to us to work out why Hadley beats Bogs. The film makes us do a lot of thinking:

• 
  Andy does not confide even in his best mate – for his protection, or his own security?
  

• 
  The rock hammer’s purpose is revealed, it seems – but only at the end will the significance of the hammer, the scratching on the wall and Rita emerge.
  
• 
  In one of Red's earliest voice-overs, the request of Rita Hayworth was foreshadowed.
  

INT. CELL – DAY

As a "nice welcome back" for Andy when he returns from the infirmary, the cons gather rocks for their now-respected hero:

VO	By the week Andy was due back, we had enough rocks saved up to keep him busy till Rapture. Also got a big shipment in that week. Cigarettes, chewing gum, sipping' whiskey, playing cards with naked ladies on 'em, you name it, and, of course, the most important item - Rita Hayworth herself.

Andy finds the wall-sized poster of the pin-up of the 1940s love goddess in a cardboard tube on his bed with a small note: "No charge. Welcome back."

Commentary

Country music plays as the inmates gather rocks for Andy as a welcome home from the infirmary, the music evoking outdoor, hillbilly life. Rita and rocks for carving chess pieces are waiting for him in his cell on his return from the infirmary. Andy has established a circle of friends in the prison.

During a surprise inspection (termed "tossing cells") of Andy's room, with his Rita Hayworth poster exhibited on one wall, his cell is torn upside down in a futile search for contraband. The only things slightly illegal are his rock carvings.

The Warden takes Andy's Bible out of his hand and expresses support for the prisoner's devotion to Scripture. "Pleased to see you reading this. Any favourite passages?"

"Watch ye therefore for ye know not when the master of the house cometh."

Norton quotes the exact reference, Mark 13.35. The Warden prefers: "I am the light of the world. He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." (John 8:12)

The Warden looks at the poster and mildly disapproves "...but I suppose exceptions can be made." As he leaves, he almost forgets to return Andy's Bible, handing it back with a meaningful phrase: "Salvation lies within."

INT. WARDEN'S OFFICE – DAY

Andy (#37937) is summoned to the office of the Warden, where his wife's framed, needlepoint sampler is prominently displayed on the wall: "His Judgement Cometh and that Right Soon"

To better use his education, Andy is transferred from the laundry area and "reassigned" to Brooks, the prison's librarian for over 37 years, since 1912. He has never had an assistant before. The broken-down prison library is stocked with cast-off reading material: "National Geographics, Reader's Digest Condensed Books, Louis L'Amours, Look Magazine, Erle Stanley Gardners."

Commentary

Andy’s cell is selected for a random inspection - but it is really so that Norton can weigh Andy up and see if he could be a useful accountant for the establishment.

• 
  The scene contains details that become extremely significant in retrospect and hold many layers of meaning.
  
• 
  There is irony in both passages in view of subsequent events. Norton must be surprised that Andy can quote the source, John 8.12. He has a phenomenal memory.
  
• 
  "Salvation lies within," - an irony later revealed – the rock hammer is hidden inside.
  
• 
  the library is a task more befitting "a man of his education" but "I hear you’re good with numbers" = signpost
  

A guard named Dekins requests financial help - "I was thinking about maybe setting up some sort of trust fund for my kids’ educations."

Later, Brooks regales the other cons with Andy's re-birth as a respected financial planner:

VO	All Andy needed was a suit and a tie and a little jiggly hula gal on his desk, he would've been Mr Dufresne, if you please."

Andy wants to expand the library. One prisoner asks for a pool table; reading is low in his priorities. Brooks pours cold water on the idea: in the six different wardens he’s seen, none have given money for the library: "their asshole puckered up tighter than a snare drum if you asked them for funds." No-one else is optimistic either, showing how deadening the institution is with people’s hopes. But Andy persists.

He meets negativity from Norton himself; they descend the stairs together. All extra money should be spent on "more walls, more bars, more guards." However, the warden does agree to mail persistent Andy's weekly letters to the State Senate.

Now valuable as a financial accountant, he is allowed to set up an office in the library where he

"did tax returns for half the guards at Shawshank. Year after that, he did them all, including the warden's. The year after that, they rescheduled the start of the intramural season to coincide with tax season. The guards on the opposing teams all remembered to bring their W-2's."

At tax time during the month of April, Andy uses Red as an assistant tax preparer.

Commentary

• 
  Andy’s real role is shown when Dekins asks for his help.
  

Andy has 'unrealistic' hopes about expanding the library's book acquisitions.

Then one day in 1954, Brooks goes berserk when his parole comes through - he holds a knife at Heywood's throat so he'll be judged crazy and not be released into the frightening real world: "I got no choice... It's the only, it's the only way they'd let me stay."

Brooks is paroled and cannot face life on the outside; he holds a knife at Heywood’s throat, but the others talk him out of it.

• 
  Red the philosopher
  

Just before he departs the prison the next dawn, Brooks also releases his full-grown pet crow Jake at the library window: "I can't take care of you no more, Jake. You go on now. You're free." The bird is a parallel to the man. The old con steps cautiously through the main gate of Shawshank, clutches the bar on the bus seat in front of him as he is transported to Portland where it is even terrifying to cross the street:

He sets Jake free in the dark, reflecting his mood.

• 
  Will the bird be able to cope without his faithful friend? The bird is free at last, but his colour is black.
  

• 
  Bars are all he has got to hang onto, a symbol of prison.
  

• 
  Poignant use of the word 'home'.
  

• 
  These words are deliberately misleading.
  

• 
  Then we see his face through the bars of the partition: he is out of jail but still imprisoned. He cannot survive on the outside.
  

• 
  Frank Darabont: "If you don't feel for Brooks, then you are not capable of feeling."
  
• 
  The other purpose of the sequence, apart from showing the effect of long-term incarceration, is to foreshadow Red's difficulties when he is finally released.
  

INT. LIBRARY – DAY