Suspenseful, mysterious, and heart-wrenching, this iconic King novella, populated by a cast of unforgettable characters, is about a fiercely compelling convict named Andy Dufresne who is seeking his ultimate revenge. Is one of Stephen King's most beloved and iconic stories, and it helped make Castle Rock a place readers would return to over and over again.

about an unjustly imprisoned convict who seeks a strangely satisfying revenge, is now available for the first time as a standalone book.Ī mesmerizing tale of unjust imprisonment and offbeat escape, the basis for the Best Picture Academy Award-nominee Since Andy’s decision to launder money puts an end to the rapes he’s been suffering, and the contraband pin-up poster Red procures for Andy aids Andy in his escape from unjust imprisonment, the novella seems to suggest that the “grown-up” approach to accommodating corruption that Andy takes in prison may be a more effective approach than either the prison staff’s total corruption or Andy’s own moral purity during his trial.Bestselling author Stephen King's beloved novella, He compares his money-laundering to Red’s contraband business, where Red secures various prohibited items for other prisoners but refuses to deal in guns, drugs, or contract killings. When the novella’s narrator, Andy’s friend Red, expresses discomfort with Andy laundering the guards’ drug-dealing money, Andy argues that “grown-ups” can make morally gray decisions for good reasons instead of descending into ineffectual moralizing or total corruption. Andy wants to secure protection from prison rapists and avoid getting a cellmate who might discover the hole he’s digging in the prison wall-so he uses his banking expertise to help guards and wardens do their taxes and launder the money they’ve earned illicitly. Guards sell drugs and take bribes, while wardens run illicit businesses, embezzle money, and use the threat of prisoners’ free labor to extort local businessmen who don’t want to be underbid on contracts. Once in prison, Andy encounters corruption everywhere.

In his trial, Andy testifies honestly-retaining his moral purity but condemning himself to prison, since the jury doesn’t find his true story believable. One protagonist, a banker named Andy Dufresne, is wrongfully imprisoned for murder on circumstantial evidence-in part because the district attorney who prosecutes Andy’s case wants to run for higher office and thinks a high-profile conviction will improve his election chances.

In the novella, corruption is everywhere. The novella’s ending suggests the third path, accommodation, is best. Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption represents the world as a corrupt place, where people can become entirely corrupt, protect their purity but remain ineffectual, or accommodate some corruption to achieve good ends without becoming entirely corrupt themselves.

Rita hayworth shawshank poster