The Author – Stephen King

Stephen Edwin King was born in Portland, Maine in 1947. He was the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. His parents seperated when Stephen was a toddler, he and his older brother, David, were raised by his mother.

Stephen attended the grammar school in Durham and he graduated in 1966 from Lisbon Falls high School. In the years at the University of Maine at Orono, he used to write a column for the school newspaper attleast one time a week. He was also active in student politics, serving as a member of the Student Senate.

In January of 1971, Stephen married Tabitha Spruce, they met in the Fogler Library at the University of Maine at Orono, where they both worked as students.

In 1967, Stephen wrote his first professional short story “The Glass Floor” and throughout the years he continued to sell stories to men’s magazines. Many of these were lathered gathered into the Night Shift collection or appeared in other anthologies. in 1982, Stephen King wrote “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank redemption” which turned out to be one of his most famous works, after the film “the Shawshank Redemption was released in 1994.

From paper to canvas

In 1994 a man with the name Frank Darabont was inspired by the book and he decided to take the story to the next level. He wanted to make the story into a film called ” The Shawshank Redemption”  Frank Darabont wrote the screenplay all by himself. He managed to put in almost all of the aspects from the book into the film and the film turned out really good. Morgen Freeman and Tim Robbins was chosen to play the main characters in the film. Red was played by Morgen Freeman and Andy Dufresne was played by Tim Robbins.

The Film has been nominated and also won allot of prices such as Oscars, Grammys, Golden Globes, Literary awards and so on. Today the film is ranked as one of the top three films ever made.

Theme

A major theme in this book is hope and hope might be a dangerous thing in prison. It can give you false thought of something good and then again drive a person mad, but Andy Dufresne never gives up on hope. In the book Andy Dufresne always has a thought of hope, he hope that one day he will walk out of the prison as a free man. So apperently that could be a major theme in the book.

The Main Characters

The main characters in the book, like I said in the introduction in my later post is Andy Dufresne and Ellis Boyd “Red” Redding.

Andy Dufresne used to be a vice-president in the trust department of a large Portland bank. Andy is in prison for murdering his wife and her lover. He and his wife had been fighting a lot because Andy thought that she had been cheating on him. So one day he followed her after they had been fighting and he was right. His wife had another lover. Andy was drunk that day, he was sad, confused and angry. He had thought of suicide, but he couldn’t do it. He drew back home, dropped his revolver in The Royal River. and went to bed. The next day, his wife and her lover was found dead in the golfers’ apartment with four bullets in theirs head. And as we know a revolver only holds six bullets not eight. And therefore he had to empty his revolver, reload it and then shoot them one more time each. They didn’t find the revolver in the river, and therefor they didn’t actually know that it was Andy who shot them, but they still sentenced him to serve two death sentences for both of his victims.

Ellis Boyd “Red” Redding, the other main character came to Shawkshank prison at the age of 20. He’s the guy that can get it for you. Tailor made cigarettes, a bag of reefer, if you’re partial to that, a bottle of brandy to celebrate your son or daughter’s high school graduation, or almost anything else. Red is one of the few in their litte “family” who is willing to own up to what he did. He committed murder. He fix the breaks on the Chevrolet coupè of his lovely wife which was three years older than him. What he didn’t planned on was that her stopping to pick up the neighbour woman and the neighbour woman’s infant son on the way down Castle Hill and into town. He was sentenced to serve three death sentences for all three of his victims, to run one after the other. Which fixed up any chance of parole he might have, for a long, long time.

Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemtion – Introduction

Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemtion is a story written by Stephen King. It’s one of four stories in a book called “different seasons”.
The Story is about two men, one innocent and one guilty. They are both convicted for murdering their wife’s, including some other persons. The main characters in the story are Andy Dufresne and Ellis Boyd “Red” Redding. Andy Dufresne is the innocent convict, and Red is the guilty convict. Andy Dufresne is to serve two death sentences for both of his victims, his wife and her lover (some golf pro). Red is to serve three death sentences for all three of his victims, his wife, and his two neighbors that accidentally jumped into death when they join a ride in Reds wife’s car.

The Story takes place in a prison Shawshank, Andy Dufresne and Red get good along and they form a perfect partnership inside the prison. It sounds like a very harsh environment, the sisters (homosexual u can call them, but actually they are just desperate and straight men, serving a long time in prison) beats up Andy to get a bite of him.