The Shawshank Redemption is an iconic movie and one of the most successful adaptations of a Stephen King story, but there remains some confusion about the age of Andy Dufresne and exactly how long he spends in Shawshank prison. Famously, director Frank Darabont’s movie was a box office flop on its initial theatrical run in 1994 before receiving seven Academy Award nominations without taking home a single Oscar. Nevertheless, the story of Red (Morgan Freeman) and Andy Dufresne’s (Tim Robbins) friendship within the walls of Shawshank prison is considered both a beloved classic and a brilliant book adaptation in contemporary culture.
Despite being based on Stephen King’s novella, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, Frank Darabont’s movie deviates significantly from the source material both in terms of story and casting. For example, The Shawshank Redemption removes Brooks Hatlen’s crimes entirely from the story, while the narrator, Ellis Boyd “Red” Redding, goes from being a white Irishman in the book to being played by Morgan Freeman’s iteration of the character. Similarly, the novella describes Andy Dufresne as a “short, neat, little man,” making him strikingly different physically from the towering Tim Robbins.
Despite these changes, working out the amount of time Andy spends in Shawshank prison is simple. According to Red, he first arrives in “early 1947,” while his remarkable escape takes place in 1966, meaning that he spends nineteen years in jail. However, since the movie never mentions his age, it is necessary to refer to the novella, in which Red claims that convicted murderer Andy Dufresne is thirty when he first arrives at Shawshank, making him forty-nine years old when he escapes. There is also a year or less between Andy’s escape and Red gaining his own freedom, with the ten-year gaps between each of his parole hearings making this relatively easy to work out. The first, which occurs just before Andy Dufresne arrives in 1947, marks twenty years of Red’s incarceration; the second is ten years later in 1957, with the third in 1967. While the movie is a little hazy regarding how long after his release Red joins Andy in Zihuatanejo, it seems likely that Andy Dufresne is fifty years old at the end of The Shawshank Redemption.
Unsurprisingly, the movie’s variations from the story, which is just one part of Stephen King’s Different Seasons collection, complicate these details. While the novella says Andy Dufresne’s age when he is first taken to the prison is thirty, it also says he arrives there in 1948 rather than 1947. Similarly, the amount of time he and Red are in prison is significantly longer. Rather than escaping in 1966, Andy doesn’t get out until 1975, and the story ends in May 1977, making Andy Dufresne fifty-nine.
There are reasons that these changes to dates and timescales make sense from a storytelling perspective. For a start, there is a certain amount of condensing that is necessary to bring the story to the screen. The art of book-to-film adaptation can easily go wrong, but writer/director Frank Darabont avoids this trap by facilitating necessary narrative changes to fully embrace the story’s themes. This may explain why The Shawshank Redemption is IMDBs best-rated movie and, more pertinently, why the movie is so beautifully paced. It also remains hard to imagine better performances than those given by Freeman and Robbins, which further elevates The Shawshank Redemption as an enduring testament to hope and friendship in film.
