Shawshank Redemption Analysis

“Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption”, taken from the collection Different Seasons published in 1982, is one of Stephen King’s most acknowledged works. The novella is written from the perspective of Red, an inmate of Shawshank State Penitentiary, who recalls the story of Andy Dufresne, his friend and fellow inmate. Dufresne, a banker from Maine, is sent to Shawshank State Penitentiary to serve a double life sentence after being falsely accused of murdering his wife and her lover. In his narrative, Red recounts every aspect of prison life, from extreme loneliness and boredom to brutal beatings and corruption. However, his main focus is Andy Dufresne and his impact on Shawshank State Penitentiary over the course of twenty-eight years.

Although a well-known piece by a highly acclaimed and prolific author, “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank

To begin, two key themes present in King’s work are imprisonment and isolation. These themes exist in a physical sense as the novella is set almost entirely in a Maine prison. As an inmate of Shawshank State Penitentiary, Red explains that isolation is a very large aspect of prison life. He not only alludes to the large amounts of time spent alone in a prison cell but he also highlights that inmates could be sent to solitary confinement for up to thirty days for the slightest misconduct which he, along with Andy Dufresne, experienced several times throughout the novella. In my own work, Aliyah suffers greatly from various mental health issues, but it is her anxiety that is her greatest obstacle in life. Like most people who suffer with a mental illness, Aliyah struggles greatly with feelings of isolation. As well as this, because of her anxiety, the theme of imprisonment is also present in a metaphorical sense whereby Aliyah feels trapped by her