Summary
Andy sets to work writing to the Senate asking for books every week, but gets no answers. Red also tells us that Andy does all of the guards' tax returns, adding, "year after that he did them all, including the warden's." All the while, he continues to write to the Senate, and even gets Red a job as his assistant.
One day, one of the inmates runs to get Andy and Red and brings them into the library, where Brooks is holding Heywood at knifepoint, threatening to kill him. The men try to calm him down as Heywood looks at them, his eyes filled with terror. As Heywood's neck begins to bleed, Andy talks Brooks out of his act and Brooks begins to cry, releasing Heywood. Brooks begins sobbing and Heywood tells them that he doesn't understand what happened; he just came to bid Brooks farewell, as Brooks' parole just came through.
Outside, the men discuss Brooks' state, and Red explains that he's been in the prison for 50 years—"this is all he knows!" Red goes on to explain that in jail, Brooks is an important and educated man, but in the outside world, he doesn't have a role or a purpose. "These walls are funny," he says, "First you hate them, then you get used to them."
We see Brooks talking to one of the crows he takes care of in the library of the prison, and setting it free. He leaves the prison with a small suitcase and rides the bus back into society. We hear a letter from him to the inmates read in voiceover, "Dear fellas, I can't believe how fast things move in the outside. I saw an automobile once when I was a kid, but now they're everywhere. The world went and got itself in a big damn hurry." We see him entering a halfway house where he is living, and working at his job bagging groceries. We then see him in the park feeding the birds, and tossing and turning in his sleep, disoriented. He packs up a bag, climbs up on a desk, carves "Brooks was here," then hangs himself.
The men finish reading the letter, which ends with the suggestion that Brooks is going to hang himself. "He should've died in here," Red says.
The scene shifts and Hadley brings Andy into a room where there is a stack of books and a letter outlining that the government has agreed to provide $200 to fund the prison library and has donated a number of used books to the cause. Hadley orders him to clear out the books, and Andy relishes the fact that his six years of letter writing have paid off.
Among the books, Andy finds a record of the opera Le Nozze di Figaro and plays it. He then connects it to the speakers in the prison and it plays throughout the facility. Andy locks the prison guard, who has gone to the bathroom, in the bathroom while he plays the record, and the guard calls to be let out. Andy lets the record play.
Norton comes to the office where Andy is playing the record and tries to open it. Angrily, he bangs on the window and orders Andy to turn the record off, but Andy just turns it up louder. Hadley breaks the glass with his club and subdues Andy, and Andy is put in solitary confinement for two weeks as punishment.
When Andy returns to lunch with his friends, he tells them it was an easy two weeks. He explains that he had the music in his head the whole time he was there and that got him through. Andy accounts for the importance of remembering music, saying that they ought not "forget that there are places in the world that aren't made out of stone, that there's a… there's something inside that they can't get to and they… they can't touch. It's yours." Red is skeptical, and tells Andy that "hope is a dangerous thing," and can make a man go insane.
Red appears before his parole officers, who note that he has served 30 years and ask him if he feels he has been rehabilitated. "Without a doubt," says Red, telling them that he is no longer a danger to society. They reject his plea for parole regardless. Outside, Red comments to Andy that he's been there for 30 years. "I wonder where 10 years went," Andy says, commiserating, before handing him a gift, a harmonica.
We see a poster of Marilyn Monroe on Andy's cell wall, as the guards call for lights out. After the guards have left, Red plays his harmonica quietly.
The scene shifts and we see the prison getting renovations, as Red explains in voiceover that Andy kept writing letters to the Senate twice a week until they began to send more money "just to shut him up." The men sort through books, and Andy tells them where to put them. When Heywood encounters The Count of Monte Cristo, he mispronounces Alexandre Dumas' last name as "Dumbass," and Andy tells him that the book is about a prison break.
They work on the library until it is, in Red's words, "one of the finest prison libraries in New England." It even has music, and we see Heywood sitting at a desk listening to Hank Williams. Red then narrates that that was also the year of Norton's Inside Out program, a measure that gets prison inmates working on projects outside the prison walls.
Norton gets some pushback from local business owners who see his Inside Out program as using slave labor to take away business and work from local business owners. As the men work, a man complains to Norton that he needs the new highway contract or his business will go under, holding open a pie box with a pie and a monetary bribe. Norton gets the hint and tells him not to worry, accepting the bribe.
"Behind every shady deal, behind every dollar earned, there was Andy, keeping the books," Red narrates, and we see Norton opening a vault behind a framed needlepoint in his office to store the financial information, before giving Andy the pie to bring to the other inmates.
In the library, Red and Andy eat the pie and discuss Norton's dirty money deals. Andy tells Red that Norton uses him to create explanations for all the money that Norton is pulling in and making it look ethical. "By the time Norton retires, I'll have made him a millionaire," Andy says, smirking. Red warns him that the paper trail will make him more vulnerable to punishment in the future, but Andy insists that it won't lead back to him or the warden, but to a completely fabricated person.
"You can't just make a person up!" Red insists, but Andy tells him that he created a social security number and a number of other biographical details, so if the police ever go after the money, they will be going after a figment of Andy's imagination. "Did I say you were good? Shit, you're a Rembrandt," says Red, marveling at Andy's abilities. Andy tells Red he was honest in the outside world, but that prison has made him a crook.
Analysis
In this section of the film, we begin to see the toll that prison life can take on men's lives and sanity over time. While Andy manages to carve out a sensible niche for himself as a kind of accountant for the staff members at the jail, it is still a prison, and the state of imprisonment takes a huge toll on some of the characters' well beings. Brooks, for instance, a kind old man, becomes crazy and inconsolable at the thought of leaving. Having been at the prison for 50 years, the real world seems like a scarier place than prison ever did. The story curiously subverts the viewer's perception of prison and frames it as a kind of shelter, a place for wayward people to find purpose and redemption.
Indeed, the real world is more of a nightmare than a comfort for Brooks, showing the ways that society can leave behind those that a community like prison has otherwise protected. Brooks' story, of getting out of prison to encounter a world overtaken by technology and moving faster than he can keep up with—a place that doesn't respect or support him—is a tragic one. The montage of Brooks acclimating to society, and eventually rejecting it through suicide, shows the viewer what an unforgiving world the prisoners are up against, and further aligns us with their plights.
One of the most valuable commodities in the prison is any suggestion of the feminine. We see this first during the screening of Gilda, when all the men hoot and holler at the entrance of Rita Hayworth. Andy even requests a poster of Hayworth from Red to hang in his cell. The feminine is again put on a pedestal when Andy finds the opera record among the used books and plays it throughout the prison. A gentle and warm soprano rings out throughout the prison yards, and the men are enraptured with the sound, a promise of the beauty and gentleness that lies outside the prison walls.
Andy's mystery and likability are connected to the fact that he is a spiritual leader among the inmates. He is self-sacrificing, kindhearted, and connected to his deepest values. This is typified by the moment he extols the virtues of music to his friends. While the other men are beaten down and discouraged by their time in prison, somewhat resigned to the ways that imprisonment has shaped them, Andy insists that they must keep something for themselves. He uses music as an example of something that they keep in touch with, and insists that by maintaining this relationship, they can each understand themselves, and maintain a part of themselves that the dehumanizing conditions of prison life cannot take away.
Ethics become fuzzy at the prison when we realize that the warden himself is a crook. Norton sets up the Inside Out program, which appears to create opportunities for inmates to work outside the prison and help to improve infrastructure in the outside world. It soon becomes clear, however, that the operation is only taking away from local businesses, and is a scheme to earn bribe money from those business owners who don't want to lose their incomes. Norton, a seemingly pious man, is a criminal himself, even though his crimes are shrouded in the appearance of virtue. The film shows the ways that those in positions of authority or power are no more ethical or conscientious than the men over whom they preside.
