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Pin-Up Posters
In Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, rocks, crystals, and concrete represent Andy Dufresne’s persistence, which he uses to dominate the prison environment and to inspire others. Early in the novella, convict and contraband-smuggler Red compares the process of a prisoner getting parole after repeated hearings to “a river eroding a rock;” thus, the novella associates freedom with both persistence and rock-shaping. Later, Andy uses a similar comparison to describe the endless letters he writes to the Maine state legislature trying to secure funding for the prison library: the letters are water droplets falling “once every year for a million years” and the legislature is “a block of concrete”—though the water seems to have no power, eventually the concrete will erode.
Andy first approaches Red in Shawshank prison’s exercise yard because Andy wants a rock-hammer, which he plans to use to collect beautiful rocks in the prison environs. To prove to Red he’s serious, Andy sifts through the exercise-yard dirt and uncovers a quartz with a “milky glow.” The quartz touches Red emotionally, because he associates it with unfenced outdoor areas, and he agrees to get Andy the rock-hammer. Thus the reader sees how Andy refuses to let prison destroy his humane appreciation for beauty, and how that refusal touches other prisoners. Later, in thanks, Andy sends Red two pieces of polished quartz. Given the labor Andy must have expended finding and polishing the quartz, Red feels “awe for the man’s brute persistence”—so that the novella explicitly connects Andy’s shaping of rocks and crystals to his indomitable personality.
Eventually, Andy escapes from prison through a hole he’s dug in his concrete cell wall over decades using two rock-hammers Red has procured for him. Andy’s escape makes literal the connection between his interest in rock, crystals, and concrete; his persistence; and his ability to dominate his environment. Since Andy gives some of his rocks to Red—and since, after being paroled, Red eventually decides to join Andy in Mexico rather than commit another crime and return to prison—the rocks also symbolize how Andy’s persistence inspires others to persist as well.
Rocks, Crystals, and Concrete Quotes in Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption
The Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption quotes below all refer to the symbol of Rocks, Crystals, and Concrete. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption
Quotes
It was a silly idea, and yet . . . seeing that little piece of quartz had given my heart a funny tweak. I don’t know exactly why; just an association with the outside world, I suppose. You didn’t think of such things in terms of the yard. Quartz was something you picked out of a small, quick-running stream.
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How much work went into creating those two pieces? Hours and hours after lights-out, I knew that. First the chipping and shaping, and then the almost endless polishing and finishing with those rock-blankets. Looking at them, I felt the warmth that any man or woman feels when he or she is looking at something pretty, something that has been worked and made—that’s the thing that really separates us from the animals, I think—and I felt something else, too. A sense of awe for the man’s brute persistence.
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He discovered a hunger for information on such small hobbies as soap-carving, woodworking, sleight of hand, and card solitaire. He got all the books he could on such subjects. And those two jailhouse staples, Erie [sic] Stanley Gardner and Louis L’Amour. Cons never seem to get enough of the courtroom or the open range.
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I’ve still got them, and I take them down every so often and think about what a man can do, if he has time enough and the will to use it, a drop at a time.
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Rocks, Crystals, and Concrete Symbol Timeline in Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption
The timeline below shows where the symbol Rocks, Crystals, and Concrete appears in Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption
...the chance to form his own opinions. Andy asks the narrator to get him a rock-hammer. When the narrator asks why Andy wants it, Andy asks whether he usually asks customers...
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Andy explains to the narrator that he used to collect rocks. He sifts through dirt from the exercise yard, finds a piece of quartz, and shows...
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The narrator and Andy settle on a price for the rock-hammer, 10 dollars. When the narrator asks Andy whether he has the money, Andy says he...
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...narrator in the exercise yard. As Andy walks away, the narrator sees him palm a rock and hide it in his sleeve. The narrator thinks well of Andy’s sleight-of-hand and his...
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In autumn 1948, the narrator sells Andy six rock-blankets, tools for polishing rocks. Almost half a year later, during the prison’s monthly film screening,...
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...Rita Hayworth pin-up poster, Andy sent the narrator (through an intermediary) two beautifully polished quartz crystals, which filled the narrator with “awe for the man’s brute persistence.”
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...and “more guards.” Andy asks Stammas to think about a tiny drip of water eroding concrete over a long period. Stammas laughs and volunteers to send the letters for Andy, provided...
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...keeps working for him, he’ll shut down the library, give Andy a cellmate, take his rock collection, and tell the guards to let other prisoners rape him. Andy keeps working for...
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Andy continues his routines, working in the library, finding and polishing rocks, and buying a new rock-hammer from Red in 1967. Sometimes he gives away the rocks...
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...after the Red Sox’s loss, Red sees Andy sitting in the sun holding a couple rocks. Andy invites Red to sit and gives him the rocks as gifts. They discuss that...
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...access Peter Stevens’s money. He tells Red that in a town called Buxton, against a rock wall in a hayfield, Jim left a paperweight Andy once owned. Beneath the paperweight is...
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...night he dreams he’s in a hayfield, trying to retrieve a key beneath a huge rock but not strong enough to move the stone, while bloodhounds bark nearby.
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...Red, no one knows what happened. Eventually Norton storms into Andy’s cell, swipes the depleted rock collection off the windowsill (Andy took some rocks with him), and tears down the Linda...
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...the hole found a porcelain sewer pipe with a hole knocked into it and a rock-hammer abandoned nearby. Andy had entered the pipe and crawled through it into the creek where...
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...and learns Andy’s cellblock was constructed as a WPA project from 1934 to 1937, when concrete was comparatively primitive. Red guesses Andy’s interest in rocks—which suited his “patient, meticulous nature” and...
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Wondering how Andy disposed of the concrete he dug from the wall, Red recalls seeing Andy in the exercise yard with sand...
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