Author's Style
Narrative Voice
The novella Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption is written in third person. For example “I would have voted to convict, too.” (Page 18)
Descriptions
The descriptions are very flowery, and at times too flowery. The author, Stephen King would sometimes go into too much detail to the point where it was just unneeded and vulgar. For example “You bleed for awhile. If you don’t want some clown asking you if you just started your period, you wad up a bunch of toilet paper and keep it down the back of your underwear until it stops. The bleeding really is like a menstrual flow; it keeps up for two, maybe three days, a slow trickle. Then it stops. No harm done, unless they’ve done something even more unnatural to you. No physical harm done— but rape is rape, and eventually you have to look at your face in the mirror again and decide what to make of yourself.” (Page 33)
Use of Dialogue
The dialogue was definitely authentic. The setting was a prison in the time period of the early forties to late sixties. A lot of the people in the prison are uneducated and are just people to use street slang and other sorts of words. That’s exactly how the dialogue was, for example “Tailormade 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 ... within reason, that is. It wasn’t always that way.” (Page 15) Reefer is slang for a marijuana cigarette.
Literary Techniques
The technique used in Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption is surely order. The story starts off about how Andy Dufresne ended up in prison. The story progresses in order of events in prison with occasional flashbacks, and then ends with an escape from prison by Andy. For example “Then came April 23rd, a day I’ll not forget even if I live another fifty-eight years. It was a balmy Saturday afternoon, and I was walking up what a little boy fishing from a bridge told me was called The Old Smith Road. I had taken a lunch in a brown FoodWay bag, and had eaten it sitting on a rock by the road. When I was done I carefully buried my leavings, as my dad taught me before he died, when I was a sprat no older than the fisherman who had named the road for me.” (Page 104)
Genre
The genre is no doubt realistic fiction. Everything that happens in the story can very well happen to anyone in the world, and it has, people get put in prison for things they didn’t do, I mean they don’t always escape or escape successfully but for the most part, this could happen to anyone. The reason it’s fiction is because, this isn’t a true story, even though this can happen to someone, it hasn’t actually happened like this so that’s why it’s realistic fiction.
Theme
The theme is a strong and universal one. It is hope. It is as simple and broad as hope. The author is trying to encourage people to keep hope when life kicks you down because hope can pick you back up. According to the story hope can set you free, and that is exactly what hope does in the short story Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption. After a successful banker named Andy Dufresne is sentenced to life in prison for a crime he didn’t commit he never loses hope throughout his prison life and eventually he redeems himself. “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.” (Page 106)