I chose as mentor Stephen King, one of the most celabrate author of our times. I read Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption during my first semester at COC, about one year and half ago, and it has been love at first sight. It may seem odd that I choose an author I do not like ‘in toto’, but it is probably this attraction-repulsion that pushed me to explore his work. The novella offers a poignant insight into the life of inmates in the early 1950's. Red, a convicted murderer serving a life’ sentence, narrates the story about his friendship with Andy, a man who remains untouched from the bleakness of the prison as protected by an invisible coat. Eventually, he disappears from his cell, escaping through a tunnel he dug with a little rock hammer, becoming a legend. Around the two principal characters a cruel world is masterfully painted by a powerful, vivid, and often …show more content…
From the very beginning the novel describes the typical effects of long-term imprisonment, painting an accurate picture of the total lack of freedom and dignity that leads the prisoner to lose the ability to survive outside the prison’s wall. The day one enters Shawshank, the prison guards take away one’s personal belongings and clothes. However, if one is ingenious enough, one can hide something inside their body. Red metaphorically describes the prison check-in process as follows, “…one of the bellhops is obliged to bend you over and take a look up your works… a man who is really determined can get a fairly large item quite a ways up them… unless the bellhop you happen to draw is in the mood to pull on a rubber glove and go prospecting” (King 24). When a man is frisked like a suitcase, what remains of him is just the shadow of a human being. In a place where everything has been taken—even one’s dignity—there is no limit for the worst, as the sisters