“Trust in the lord, but your ass belongs to me,” is how incoming prisoners are greeted by the warden in The Shawshank Redemption. Ultimately a story of friendship and hope, the gritty movie also shows that bad guys aren’t always all that bad, and good guys aren’t always good at all.
Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) was a bank VP sent to Shawshank in 1947 to serve two consecutive life sentences after being framed for the murder of his wife and her golf pro lover. He befriends a prisoner named Red (Morgan Freeman) and the two (and the other inmates) got away with some pretty wild stuff during their incarceration, much of which was done to break up the monotony of a place where routine rules the roost.
Pets Allowed
Brooks Hatlen (James Whitmore) is an older inmate who keeps an injured bird in his prison uniform pocket and feeds it with maggots he finds in the prison food. He’s also the prison librarian, who uses his route distributing books to prisoners in their cells to deliver contraband. Although not exactly the free man's definition of “wild,” for an old man in prison, this is big.
By the time Andy arrived, Brooks had been incarcerated for four decades. He serves another 10, then is let out because he’s old and deemed harmless and the prison needs the room for new inmates. Brooks struggles to exist in the outside world.
Down For A Beat Down
Apparently, a time-passing activity at Shawshank that the guards are never around to see is inmates giving other prisoners a hard time, more pointedly brutally beating them to a pulp. New inmates are fair game.
Andy was a prime target not only because he was tall, handsome, and successful on the outside, but his mild-mannered behavior gave the impression he wouldn’t fight back. Not to mention, his educated, white-collar background led to the belief that Andy thought he was above the rather rougher, non-intellectual men, which made them defensive. Andy gets beat up in a storage room constantly for his first two years, eventually ending up in the infirmary for a long stay.
Business Is Booming
Shawshank is full of entrepreneurs worthy of a shot on Shark Tank. Red, in particular, has made his reputation as “the guy who gets stuff,” wheeling and dealing via trucks that deliver basic goods (food, bedding, clothing) to the prison. Red has drivers smuggle in liquor, cartons of cigarettes, books, posters, playing cards with “girly pictures “ on them, whatever his fellow prisoners need.
That’s how he and Andy become friends - the newbie approaches the vet prisoner for a rock hammer, as well as a Rita Hayworth poster. In Shawshank, the currency is cigarettes with which the men trade and gamble. Red is also the prison bookie.
Let's Talk Money
Andy was not only smarter than his fellow inmates but the guards, too. When the savvy former banker hears the head guard, Captain Hadley (Clancy Brown), talk about inherited money that he was sure the government was going to take most of, Andy dares to speak to him to offer not only tax advice but to do the paperwork as well.
In the spirit of quid pro quo, all Andy asks for in return are icy beers for the inmates who, like himself, are tarring the prison roof in the hot sun. This not only got him in good with the guards, but also the other prisoners.
Step Into My Office
Hadley spreads the word about Andy’s investment knowledge, and the prisoner turned himself into a cottage industry. An office was set up for him to do business and soon other guards, even ones from other prisons, literally lined up for an audience with the financial genius to set up trust funds and the like.
During tax time, Andy was given a staff made up of other prisoners, such as Red, who was relieved to get out of his “day job” in the laundry room.
Going By The Book
When Andy isn’t in his accounting office or his cell, he carves chess pieces out of rocks he and his friends find when they're tasked with digging up dirt for a new road and begins to write letters to the governor asking for funds to improve the prison library. As the saying goes, if you don’t ask, you don't get. The governor not only sends the funds, but gets charity groups to send books and phonograph records.
He risks his own freedom (as much as he has) by locking a guard in the bathroom and playing a newly-acquired opera record over the loudspeaker for the enjoyment of the prisoners, who stand mesmerized in the yard. “For a moment, every man at Shawshank felt free,” said Red.
Cooking The Books
Word reaches Warden Norton (Bob Gunton) and Andy moves from his makeshift office in the prison basement to a desk outside the warden’s office, as he's now the prison accountant. As the warden sees Andy as someone who can make him a rich man, the once innocent and upright banker starts cooking the books and laundering money.
He also secretly creates a false identity: Randall Stevens - and sets up a bank account under that name. Andy confesses to Red: “On the outside, I was an honest man straight as an arrow. I had to come to prison to become a crook.”
The Innocence Project
By the time Andy was incarcerated for over 15 years, he had become an educator/mentor for the other men. A young prisoner named Tommy (Gil Bellows) comes to Shawshank and asks for help getting his GED. As he gets to know Andy, he realizes he once met an inmate at another prison who bragged he killed Andy’s wife and her lover, then laughed about how “it got pinned on the husband.”
Andy tells Warden Norton the information, hoping to get a new trial. The warden, fearing he’ll lose his cash cow (not to mention that Andy knows too much about his illegal doings) not only discourages Andy from trying to reopen his case, but has a guard shoot Tommy. Clearly, as much as the men would do anything to get out, the warden, who was becoming a millionaire, would do anything to keep Andy in.
Goodbye To Rita, Marilyn And Raquel
After 19 years, Andy decides it’s time to get out of Shawshank. Tommy’s murder, doing the warden’s dirty work, and knowing that the warden knows he’s innocent but won’t help him, are all the catalysts for his decision.
The audience finds out that for the past two decades, Andy had been digging a tunnel with the rock hammer and covering the hole with a series of pin-up girl posters, from Rita Hayworth to Marilyn Monroe to Raquel Welch. His tunnel leads down through the sewage system, where he swims through excrement to his freedom. With his new identity as Randall Stevens, Andy closes his alter ego's bank account and heads to Mexico.
Paradise Awaits
After Andy's escape, Red is finally released, as well. He honors a request that Andy made of him long ago, to go to a New England hayfield, find a long wall with a tree at the end, where there’s a black rock that should be dug up. Red finds a letter and an envelope full of money he uses to travel to Texas then cross the border to Mexico where the two friends are reunited.
Before Andy showed up at Shawshank, Red was just living one day (and scam) at a time. All he had to look forward to was hustling other inmates out of loose cigarettes. Andy helped Red remember that there was still life outside their stone walls, and to hold out hope for it.