Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption

I just finished reading Stephen King's novella, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, in his collection of stories known as Different Seasons. Sadly, it's significantly different from the screen adaptation known as The Shawshank Redemption. But I digress.

Other than Red's famous "Get busy living or get busy dying" quote (the book atributes it to Red, not Andy), I suppose these are two of my favorite quotations:

"When I get out of here," Andy said finally, "I'm going where it's warm all the time." He spoke with such calm assurance you would have thought he had only a month or so left to serve. "You know where I'm goin', Red?"

"Nope."

"Zihuatanejo," he said, rolling the word softly from his tongue like music. "Down in Mexico. It's a little place maybe twenty miles from Playa Azul and Mexico Highway 37. It's a hundred miles north-east of Acapulco on the Pacific Ocean. You know what the Mexicans say about the Pacific?"

I told him I didn't.

"They say it has no memory. And that's where I want to finish out my life, Red. In a warm place that has no memory."

___________________________________________

We're glad he's gone, but a little sad, too. Some birds are not meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them they somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure.

Tags: Stephen King, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, Shawshank Redemption

Comments

[marty]

Just watched the movie again the other night (love it) and thought, "I need to read that story." I'm going to get it out of the library.

mg

[David]

One of my favorite movies....