Shawshank Redemption

As of today, over thirty, well known critics would consider Shawshank Redemption to be the greatest movie of all time. Although the film has been given this title, director and writer Frank Darabont knows the true genius behind this story is writer, Stephen King. Stephen King is mostly known for his horror, suspense books, but this time he wrote a book about Andy Dufresne, a banker from Maine who is wrongly charged with murdering his cheating wife and her lover. King writes “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption” in the first person narrative, in the form of a monologue written by the character, Red. Throughout the whole story Red is presenting us with his recollection of imprisonment and the story of Andy Dufresne. One thing noting about how King placed Red as our narrator is that many of the things Red speaks about comes from rumors he claims he heard around the prison. This goes to show us that King intentionally placed an unreliable narrator to hold our hands through the story. There is one particular scene that King wrote with great care and precision, Andy is working in the prison when he approached by a gang that calls themselves The Sisters. In this story King wants to get the reality aspect of doing time in a prison completely correct, he does by the types of situations inmates have to put up with, and even by changing the vocabulary to correct "prison terminology". However, the realism brought out in this scene is one that would make most people just cringe at the slightest thought. Andy finds himself outnumbered, and to his dismay, finds himself wrestled down to the ground and taken advantage of by each one of the members from that gang who are present at the time. King wanted to show the extreme measures that Andy had to put up each and every day, and by making these measures so extreme it allows us to understand why he wants to break out of prison and do what he does throughout the rest of the story. The setting and mood where set up by the