Will I love Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption?

Much as I enjoyed the film based on this novella by Stephen King (which I now understand is a standalone book—I read it as part of a story collection long ago), I enjoyed the novella more.

Why? Because of its extraordinarily likeable narrative voice, which has caused people worldwide to find themselves rooting for its narrator. How can you not want to know what’ll happen next to someone so candid and down-to-earth—who has experienced homicide and love so intensely? Especially when he wants intimacy yet also feels threatened by it.

In fact, just after I finished reading the Shawshank novella,… show more.

One of Stephen King’s most famous stories, I am always inspired and moved by Andy Dufresne’s refusal to accept the terms and the condition of his imprisonment.

The subtlety and sophistication of his protest and his ultimate defeat of his captors and tormentors is an important reminder of the power of persistence. But there is another message in this story that is just as powerful and that is the beauty of the friendship.

Screen goddess Rita Hayworth, who bewitched ‘40s and ‘50s moviegoers, isn't an actual character in Stephen King’s 1982 novella or in its acclaimed 1994 movie version. But Hayworth’s fatal allure becomes palpable in King’s depiction of the erotic desires she incites in prison inmates while watching her classic thriller Gilda, leading condemned man Andy Dufresne to hang a poster pinup of Hayworth in a strategic spot in his cell. These events offer beacons of hope and possible freedom to Dufresne, who insists he’s innocent of murdering his wife and her lover. Fans of the movie know that, to mark… show more.