Tommy Williams Character Analysis

Tommy Williams, a career thief, enters Shawshank prison in 1962 at age 27. He has been incarcerated in multiple other prisons before. He has a young son and a wife, who convinces him to study for the high-school equivalency exams while at Shawshank. Andy Dufresne, who is by that point Shawshank’s librarian, helps Tommy study. Tommy grows to like Andy a lot. Having discovered that Andy was incarcerated for murdering his wife Linda and her lover Glenn Quentin, Tommy reveals to Andy that his cellmate during a previous incarceration, Elwood Blatch, bragged about having murdered Linda and Glenn during a burglary. After Andy tells Warden Samuel Norton Tommy’s story, Norton—who wants to keep Andy at Shawshank, laundering his money and under his control—transfers Tommy to another, lower-security prison in exchange for Tommy’s silence. This outcome demonstrates that, in the novella’s worldview, the U.S. justice system does not produce justice and that the correctional system does not rehabilitate prisoners but instead bends them to the whims of corrupt administrators.