Pin-Up Posters Symbol Analysis

In Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, pin-up posters represent Andy Dufresne’s desire for freedom—and his ability to hide that desire using gender stereotypes. The novella first mentions the pin-up posters early, when the narrator Red explains that in Shawshank prison, he’s the prisoner able to smuggle in contraband. He notes that in 1949, he smuggles in the actress Rita Hayworth for Andy Dufresne. At this point, Red doesn’t make clear he means a Rita Hayworth poster, leaving readers to assume that Red somehow convinces the actress to visit the prison. Later, when Red tells the whole story, readers realize that they’ve been misled: Andy asks Red for a Hayworth poster, not the woman herself. Thus, early in the story, the pin-up posters are associated with misdirection.

Yet Red, like the reader, is misled. When Andy asks for the poster, he seems nervous, excited, and embarrassed—and Red, amused, assumes that’s because the self-possessed Andy is betraying a stereotypical masculine sex drive and wanting to use the poster as a fantasy aid. He doesn’t think Andy might want the poster for other reasons. After Andy puts up different pin-up posters in his cell for years—of Marilyn Monroe and Raquel Welch, among others—Red eventually thinks to ask Andy what makes him so attached to the posters. Andy explicitly tells Red the posters represent freedom; Andy likes the Welch poster best because it shows a beach and he can imagine “step[ping] right through” the poster to coastal freedom. Yet Red still doesn’t understand until Andy escapes—and prison staff, searching Andy’s cell, discover a hole dug in his cell wall that the posters have hidden for decades. Only then does Red realize that Andy never wanted the posters for sexual reasons: Andy used stereotypes about men’s overactive sexual desires and fondness for visual aids to keep anyone from investigating the posters, which figuratively hide Andy’s never-quenched desire for freedom and literally hide Andy’s escape route.