Different Seasons

Content warning: This section of the guide contains discussion of violence and the Holocaust.

“In all my years at Shawshank, there have been less than ten men whom I believed when they told me they were innocent. Andy Dufresne was one of them, although I only became convinced of his innocence over a period of years.”

Red reports Andy’s innocence, and the fact of his probable false conviction, as he does everything else: in a matter-of-fact tone as if this weren’t the scandal it should be. King’s gesture towards the “period of years” establishes the temporal parameters of the narrative arc of the novella.

“What was right with him he'd only give you a little at a time. What was wrong with him he kept bottled up inside. If he ever had a dark night of the soul, as some writer or other has called it, you would never know.”

This passage summarizes Andy’s story arc as essentially flat. He changes very little in the course of the story from Red’s perspective. If Andy ever had a “dark night of the soul,” there is no sign of it. Andy is a catalyst for Red’s transformation and redemption.

“Listen: I knew this guy, Sherwood Bolton, his name was, and he had this pigeon in his cell. From 1945 until 1953, when they let him out, he had that pigeon… Jake, he called him. He set Jake free a day before he, Sherwood, that is, was to walk, and Jake flew away just as pretty as you could want. But about a week after Sherwood Bolton left our happy little family, a friend of mine called me over to the west corner of the exercise yard, where Sherwood used to hang out, and my friend said: 'Isn't that Jake, Red?' It was. That pigeon was just as dead as a turd.”

Jake is a metaphor for what happens to long-time prisoners, at least in Red’s observation: They lose their ability to live outside. Sherwood may have been released, but some part of him, represented by Jake, returns until it dies. King’s choice of a pigeon, a carrier of messages, emphasizes the fact that Jake metaphorically tells Red and his friend what has happened to Sherwood.