Hope

As cliché as it might sound, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption is a story about hope.The hope for something better, hope for the future, hope to keep your head up when you're locked in a cell for a crime you didn't commit and spend your days getting harassed. Cold, gray, and repressive prisons might knock you down some days, but you're never really a prisoner so long as you have hope: "Remember that hope is a good thing, Red, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies" (527). Stephen King is pretty straightforward about this theme, especially toward the end of the story, where the word "hope" appears in literally every sentence:

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. (541-544)

He ain't exactly subtle, is he?

At the same time, King doesn't just leave it at pithy sayings. A bunch of different physical manifestations of hope also appear throughout the story. It can be a bottle of beer, which, as Red puts it, "was still the best I ever had in my life" (191), or it can be a well-funded library, where Andy "discovered a hunger for information on such snail hobbies as soap-carving, woodworking, sleight of hand, and card solitaire" (199). It can even be the pile of money Andy leaves for Red in the hayfield, because, you know, money. Okay, okay, it's the note that comes with the money that really gives Red hope here:

I opened the envelope and read the letter and then I put my head in my arms and cried. (531)

That quote right there stresses something that's kind of important to the story: Objects themselves aren't important. Instead, it's what they represent and the way they affect people that matters. That's Andy's secret weapon for giving people hope: A physical object that conveys a strong feeling for whoever receives it.

The beer the prisoners get to drink up on the roof is a great example of this. The prisoners are toiling on the hot roof with tons of tar and a mean-spirited guard threatening to beat them if they go too slow. Suddenly, with Andy's help, there's a brewski in their hands. They can take a little break, drink their beer, rest and feel good for a bit, just like free men doing hard work. The beer gives the men hope because it helps them remember what it's like to be free.

The library does even more to give the prisoners hope than the beer. It helps "over two dozen guys who have used the books in here to help them pass their high school equivalency tests" (215) and, more importantly, inspires many of the men to take up those "snail hobbies" Red mentions that help the cons pass the time more productively in the joint. They carve soap, make birdhouses, and even just play new kinds of solitaire. The hobbies the men take up give them a sense of purpose, pride, and hope in creating something worthwhile.

The most telling symbol of hope in this story is probably the note that Andy leaves Red, the one that makes Red cry. It's a fairly standard letter, at least in terms of the wording—it's designed to deter suspicion (in case the wrong people read it) while simultaneously reminding Red that he, too, has a soul. The friendship and dedication the note embodies means a lot to Red—especially the fact that his buddy sent him a lifeline with no knowledge of whether he'll ever get it—and it gets him moving towards a more hopeful future.

Each one of those symbols is different, but they all have similar effects on the characters in the story. Andy knows it, and he sends them out with a sense of the exact kind of effect they're going to have. Hope springs eternal, and the symbols here demonstrate that they can pop up just about anywhere.