Stephen King is an author I have never really engaged with since I was a young boy, yet have seen quite a few films based on his works. Having watched the motion picture of The Shawshank Redemption a handful of times in the last decade, to which I rank it highly amongst my favourites, I was stunned to have actually enjoyed the original novella to the point I almost dislike the changes the film made.
The oddly named Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption centres around Shawshank prison and its most unique inmate, Andy Dufresne, a banker of small stature jailed for the suspected murder of his unfaithful wife and her rich, sporty lover. A man certain of his innocence, and one with patience, cunning, and sturdy resilience against prison’s soul-destroying climate.
Because the work is short, I don’t want to spoil too much. Most people know the gist, or can make a solid guess at how any prison-related story ends, even if they haven’t watched the film based on this work or lack any prior knowledge about one of the most well-known prison narratives. A slightly predictable ending is fine, because the primary thrill of King’s novella, instead, is how the story is delivered to us readers. It is about the journey, not the destination, so to speak.
The entire narrative is told in retrospect, written in pencil by an Irish prisoner simply known as Red, retracing much of his time housed in Shawshank and his gradual friendship with the slightly backward Andy Dufresne. Red paints what the prison was like from his entry in the late-1930s to just beyond the mid-1970s, the various characters within it, and his role as a black market item smuggler that brought him and Dufresne together. Of their various deals, the most notable was for a small rock hammer, then a certain Rita Hayworth poster some time later.
Red’s narration is often humorous and always filled with character. He typically makes rambling asides and jokes, and sometimes throws out cynical views and shows a melancholic side that grants believability to the concept that he is writing this story down whilst locked away in a cell he has spent most of his life in. How King best grounds his narrator is the asides, not only because Red is always breaking the fourth wall and addressing his reader, but because he often admits he heard events through the grapevine, can’t verify the facts on certain occasions, and sometimes has no leads for what was going on when it came to Andy Dufresne’s life and affairs inside the ever-sleazy Shawshank.
Although Dufresne is the star character—a sort of legend amongst the inmates, and a man that captures Red’s attention and silently commands his respect—the layered narrator is what upholds the quality of the story. If Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption (or just The Shawshank Redemption, if you prefer) was narrated from an impersonal, entirely chronological third person—or, alternatively, narrated in first-person from Andy Dufresne’s point of view—it would be middling at best. It is Red’s tonally distinct character, and his recollective pacing that moves ahead, then goes back to explain, then hints ahead but makes you wait for the answers, that keeps you hooked on the events surrounding Andy Dufresne.
Through Red, there is also a personal attachment to the prison and its various staff. As a reader, you get a lay of the land; the alright ones, the hard ones, and the crooked ones. Shawshank, for all the wrongs and bad elements Red highlights within it, is a place that feels weirdly human. Much of that humanity seems to come from Dufresne’s ability to use his savvy banker mind to exploit the corrupted wardens of Shawshank and transcend his status as a lowly prisoner locked up for two life sentences, with ‘murderer’ branded across his identity. This central character can bend an ironclad, hard as nails prison by sticking his fingers in all its pies and becoming a necessary asset to its underworld—something that also hinders his bid to prove his innocence and escape the prison through legal means.
In the end, it works out to a tale that comments on many things: misfortune and redemption, male friendship, corruption of law, the concept of freedom, the passage of time, and the impact prison has on every inmate. King’s novella has plentiful amounts of sadness to share, but being a story about redemption, the curve is always slowly bending towards that of a happier ending, even if it is drenched in bittersweetness. In the end, Dufresne and Red get the last laugh.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this work. Although I do think King is a bit overrated as a writer, and works more on a concept of quantity than quality in some cases (let’s also not forget peculiar choices like the weird, unnecessary underage orgy included in It), there is difficulty in denying that he has produced some amazing classics across his lengthy writing career. Although I my sample size of King’s works is small, I would suggest that Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption is, at minimum, the best of his novellas, and deserves to be read by anyone interested in prison narratives. Hands down, a brilliant story that tugs the reader along with every new beat.
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