Heroes Wiki

-Welcome to the Hero/Protagonist wiki! If you can help us with this wiki please sign up and help us! Thanks! -M-NUva

READ MORE

Heroes Wiki
Register
Advertisement
File:Andy .jpg

Andy Dufresne

Andy Dufresne is one of the main characters in the 1994 drama film The Shawshank Redemption. He is a banker who is convicted of murdering his wife and her lover. He is also a rockhound. He is portrayed by Tim Robbins.

Imprisionment

In 1947, Andy Dufresne is convicted of murdering his wife and her lover. He claims to be innocent but the police say that they have evidnce. He is sent to Shawshank Pennitentary to serve two life sentences. Upon entering the prision, he meets Captain Byron Hadley, a brutal prision guard who is in charge of security and the warden, Mr. Samuel Norton, who is seemed to be a devout christian who gives his inmates discipline and a bible.

For the first month Andy says nothing and keeps to himself. One day, he meets an African-American inmate smuggler Ellis "Red" Redding. He tells Red that he is rockhound and he asks Red for a rock hammer. During lights out, Andy finds his rock hammer.


During the first few years of his imprisionment, he works in the laundry department cleaning other prisoners clothes and he is tormented by a group of prison rapists called the Bull Queers lead by Bogs Diamond. They sometimes beat him up and will often rape him. Andy is able to fight them off sometimes and sometimes not. On a summer day when most of Andy's friends are working on the prision roof, Andy helps Captain Hadley with his tax problems in exchange for his prisioners having some beer. One day, while the other prisoners are watching a movie starring actress Rida Hayworth, Andy asks Red is he can smuggle a poster of Rita Hayworth for him. Red says yes but it will take some time. On the way back to the projector room, the Bull Queers attack him so hard that he is sent to the infirmary. Bogs is sent into solitary confinment and is later beaten to death by Captain Hadley. He is sent to a minimum security hospital and his gang has since left Andy alone. When Andy gets out of the infirmary, he finds a poster of Rita Hayworth on his bed.

One day during surprise inspection, Warden Norton admires Andy for reading his Bible and offers him to move from laundry to the library with Brooks, the prison's old librarian. There, Andy is given respect from the other prisioners and guards and protection from the guards. He decides to write letters to the city requesting more books and funds to expand the prision's library, a thing that the warden says is impossible but lets him do it anyway. While in the process of writing letters, Brooks is given parole to leave Shawshank and eventually kills himself because he couldn't handle the outside world.


After two years of letters, the city finally gives in to Andy's demands and gives him a check for $2,000 and crates of records and books. Hadley tells him to clear all of the crates before the warden gets back, but instead plays a record of and Italian woman singing opera on a record player projecting the sound over the entire prision. This makes the warden angry and makes Hadley take Andy into solitary confinement for two weeks. His friends tell him how he survives solitary confienement without going crazy. He says that hope keeps him alive, a thing that Red strongly disagrees.


In 1963, after writing more letters to the city, Andy is given more books and more funds to expand the library into making bigger and better. He names the library after Brooks. Also, the warden starts programs involving his prisioners going outside the prision to do hard working labor. In return, the warden starts recieving kickbacks and has Andy launder the money under the alias, Randal Stevens. Two years later, a new inmate named Tommy Williams is sent to Shawshank to serve two years for B&E (breaking and entering). There, he goes to Andy to help him earn his GED.

During a talk between Red and Tommy, Tommy asks why Andy is in prision. Red says for murding his wife and her lover, which brings back a moment of something to Tommy. Tommy says to Red and Andy that a few years before coming to Shawshank, he was at another prision, there he had a cellmate by the ame of Elmo Blatch. Blatch says to Tommy that he was working at a country clup and he came across a snooty golfer. He kills the golfer and a lady who happened to already be married to some banker who was convicted of the murder he didn't do. Knowing that Tommy's story is all about his wife's murder, Andy goes to the warden for another trial against Elmo Blatch, but the warden denies the story and doesn't want Andy to leave prision in order to keep the money laundering going. The warden sentences Andy to a month in solitary confinement.

Advertisement