Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption (Stephen King)

After I read the novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King and see the movie The Shawshank Redemption, based on the book, I have to denote some differences and similarities. In general, the movie is very loyal to the book but I believe that the most important aspects are as follows. For example, they are similar in the timeline. In the movie we can observe with clarity the 40’s environment, old fashion car, the shoes of Andy, and his custom is related at that time.

Even though in the movie no date appears in the beginning we can infer the time, later Red speaks the date in what Andy arrives at the prison. In the novella, the date is stated in the beginning “When Andy came to Shawshank in 1948, he was thirty years old…. ” (King 5). Another similarity is the dialogue in the trial. Both are very similar, for example, in the book we can read “But this revenge had been of a much colder type. Consider! the DA said at the jury. Four and four! Not six shots, but eight! He had fired the gun empty…and then stopped to reload so he could shoot each of them again!

Four for him and four for her…” (King 7). In the movie, the lawyer uses the same words of the novella when describes that Andy reloads the revolver for killing his wife and his lover. Of course, the dialogue is fixed from the novella to the movie highlighting the most important aspects of the trial. Another match is when Andy meets Red in the prison yard. Both, the movie and the novella, display the dialogue between Andy and Red, it uses almost the same words _“I _understand that you’re a man who knows how to get things. ” “I agree with that I was able to locate certain items from time to time. (King 16). Of course, we can appreciate the artistic way to put in the movie the essence of the novella. Even though in the movie the dialogue is simpler in the book is full in detail and expressions. Another passage with similarities is when Andy and his co-workers are doing the job over the roof and listen Byron Hadley speaks with his partners about the 35,000 dollars that he received as inherit of his dead brother. Andy is approaching him and saying _“Do you trust your wife? ”…”Boy”, Hadley said,” I’ll give you just one chance to pick up that pad. And then you’re going off this roof on your head. (King 33). It is almost the same dialogue that the characters use in the film. It is very remarkable the part when Red reminds the event explaining how they felt at that time. “That’s how, on the second-to-last day of the job, the convict crew that tarred the plate-factory roof in 1950 ended up sitting in a row at ten o’clock on a spring morning, drinking Black Label beer supplied by the hardest screw that ever walked a turn at Shawshank state prison. ”(King 37)_. In the movie he finishes the narration felling like a free man tarring a roof of one of their own houses, arguing why Andy did that.

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For him, he did it just to feel normal again. It is pretty similar when you read the book. Of course, the novella has much detail that it can’t fit in the length of a movie. Like I said in the beginning, the film is very loyal to the novella but I notice some differences or parts that you don’t see in the movie and you don’t read in the book. For example, one thing can be the physical traits of the protagonists. Andy Dufresne is described in the novella as follows “. He was a short, neat little man with sandy hair and small, clever hands. He wore gold-rimmed spectacles. (King 5). In the movie, Andy is characterized by Tim Robbins. We know that actor. He is tall, handsome, and don’t use any kind of spectacles in his performance, at least not in the beginning. Another is Red who is performed by Morgan Freeman. That actor is black but in the novella. Red is a white Irish man with red hair. “A kid had come in back in 1938, a kid with a big mop of carroty red hair…” (King 45). Another difference is Brooke Hatlen, the librarian, the novella tells us about his parole in 1952. He never threatens to cut the throat of another prisoner in order to avoid being parole like we observe in the movie.

The novella states that Brooksie died in an indigent’s home in 1953 “_I heard he died in a home for indigent old folks up Freeport way in 1953… (King 39. ). In the movie Brooks suicide later that he got freedom. He doesn’t know how to live outside the prison and take his life away. It is only happening in the movie, not in the novella. At the time when Andy become a new librarian the warden of the prison is a man called Stammas_ “He began to write to the State Senate in Augusta in 1954. Stamas was warden by then, and he used to pretend Andy was some sort of mascot. ”(Kings 40). In the film, Norton is the warden throughout the movie.

This character in the novella is multiple, Norton was the last one in the novella but in the movie, he is the only one. In the novella, Samuel Norton resigned three months after Andy’s escape but in the film, he is killing himself with a gun. Another difference is Tommy Williams, a professional thief arrives at Shawshank in 1962 not in 1965 as the movie shows us. He has a wife and a three years old baby boy, not a baby girl like in the movie the narrator does. In the film when Tommy discovers that he knows who killed Andy’s wife and his lover, Sam Norton killed Tommy to avoid set Andy free.

Consequently, he could speak about Norton’s monkey business when he is releasing from the jail. In the novella Norton transferred Tommy to a minimum-security prison: At that, Andy fell silent. He was an intelligent man, but it would have taken an extraordinarily stupid man not to smell deal all over that. Cashman was a minimum-security prison far up north in Aroostook County… Norton had almost surely dangled all of that under Tommy’s nose with only one string attached: not one more word about Elwood Blatch, not now, not ever…(King 61-62).

Another variation is something that I noticed immediately when I read the passage of the book on page 44. The novella speaks about Normaden, an Indian prisoner who was the unique cellmate Andy had. In the movie, this character never appears, only in the novella. “_But in all that time Andy never had a cellmate, except for a big, silent Indian named Normaden (like Indians in The Shawshank, he was called chief), and Normaden didn’t last long. (King 44)_. I think that character has not a great impact on the movie to put in on the screen.

I have noticed more differences between the book and the movie but I have to remark the last one. The ending of the movie is pretty different from the novella. In the film, the end is an encounter between Andy a Red in a beach in Mexico, but in the novel, the ending is Red traveling to Zihuatenejo, the place that Andy mentioned Red when he was in prison: I hope Andy is down there. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams.

I hope. (King 101) I have to conclude that the movie is artistically adapted to communicate the essence of the novella. But I prefer to read the novella. It is more plenty of details and some parts of it are not included in the movie. However, I like the movie too. It is pretty similar but I understand that is quite impossible to put on the screen all of the details we read in the book.

Works Cited

King, Stephen. Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. U. S. A.: Viking Press, 1982.

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