Seems like on any given weekend, I can flip through the channels and come across The Shawshank Redemption, and more often than not, I will pause to watch it, if only for a few minutes.
There’s so much right in that story–both the screenplay and the novella Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption.
I got to thinking, what is was that I liked so much about it? So I started a list:
- Few things are more satisfying in fiction than when a villain is foiled by his own treachery.
- Shows you can swim through a river of sh!t and come out clean on the other side.
- Tim Robbins is sweetly adorable. (Okay, okay, unrelated to the screenplay or the novella, but still.)
- Persistence pays off.
- The moments of pure angst followed by the palate-cleansing redemptive moments (for example Brooks’ suicide followed by Andy’s opera takeover).
- I have no idea what those two Italian ladies were singing about either, but I concur with Red.
- Demonstrates and says: Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things.
- Get busy living or get busy dying.
- Zihuatanejo. I just like the way it sounds… Zihuatanejo.
Are you a fan of Shawshank? What do you feel are the strengths of the story? And if you’re not a fan, where does it fall short?
k. Rawson 