The Shawshank Redemption’s Biggest Change To Stephen King’s Book Makes The Movie Much Better

This article discusses themes of extreme violence and suicide.

Frank Darabont’s The Shawshank Redemption improves on the novel in a few important ways, with one change in particular making the adaptation much more intense. The Shawshank Redemption is one of the best Stephen King movies ever made, and it mostly remains faithful to the story.

There are only a few important differences between The Shawshank Redemption‘s adaptation and King’s book. Darabont also made The Mist and The Green Mile, so it’s fair to say that he understands King’s work better than most other filmmakers. He knows how to enhance the story for the big screen while keeping the essence intact.

The Shawshank Redemption Is More Violent Than Stephen King’s Book

The Movie Has More Death Than The Book

Warden Norton in The Shawshank Redemption

One key change that The Shawshank Redemption makes to the book is the fact that Darabont’s vision of Shawshank is much more violent. That’s not to say that King’s work isn’t already unsettling and filled with physical conflict, but Darabont takes things up another notch.

In the movie, Brooks and Warden Norton both take their own lives, which is completely different from the book. King’s story follows Brooks on the outside until he dies of natural causes in his old age, and Norton simply accepts his fate when the police come knocking, but he’s arrested without harming himself.

Another big change is that Tommy is murdered by Warden Norton to shut him up in the movie. In King’s book, Norton merely arranges to have him transferred away from Shawshank. This has the same effect, since Andy is once again hopeless to appeal his case, but it’s another example of how the novel is less violent.

King doesn’t shy away from depicting violence in his novel – which is titled Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption – and some of the movie’s most upsetting scenes are lifted straight from the page. The difference is that The Shawshank Redemption is often more shocking with both the motivations for its violence and the very nature of the acts.

The Violence And Death In The Shawshank Redemption Gives The Story More Power

Each Death Is Backed Up By Sound Storytelling Logic

Tommy dead in Shawshank Redemption while the warden looks at him

Although the added violence makes The Shawshank Redemption more viscerally powerful, it serves a larger purpose than simply providing shock value. In each case where the movie portrays more death and violence than the book, there are good reasons that enhance the drama of the story.

The sequence that shows Brooks struggling to adapt to life on the outside is heartbreaking, with his narration coming from a letter to his friends to illustrate the fact that he still thinks of them and has nobody else to talk to. His death is what makes this scene so tragic, hammering home the dangers of institutionalization that could also affect Andy and Red.

Warden Norton’s death is just as powerful for a completely different reason. By taking his own life rather than surrendering and accepting a prison sentence, it highlights the fact that he’s fully aware of what his fate would be in prison. His death is a twisted form of justice, given the fact that he has made life in prison miserable for countless other people.

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Norton’s decision to have Tommy killed is just one of his countless crimes at Shawshank. This moment accentuates his sadistic ruthlessness as the movie’s primary antagonist, but it also helps underline the idea that there’s no way out of Shawshank for Andy except escape. His one faint hope of absolution is brutally snuffed out.

Every time Darabont’s movie seems more violent than King’s book, it directly impacts Andy’s story. His stay at Shawshank might not seem so dangerous and hopeless if any of these deaths had been removed in favor of King’s ideas from the novel. They each reinforce the idea that hope is rare and precious, and that it must often come from within.

The Shawshank Redemption Makes A Few Other Small But Important Changes

The Movie Had To Avoid Red’s Character Description Completely

While The Shawshank Redemption‘s biggest change is the way that it ramps up the violence and death from King’s book, there are a few other edits that help make it one of the best movies ever. A seemingly superficial example is the fact that Red is described as a white Irishman in the book, but it’s hard to imagine the movie without Morgan Freeman completely defying this profile.

If The Shawshank Redemption were much more faithful then it likely wouldn’t be as powerful.

Boggs is also a much less prominent character in the book, although his targeted abuse of Andy is one of the story’s main plot points in the first half of The Shawshank Redemption. Yet again, Darabont sees the potential to subtly adapt King’s work to enhance the drama of the narrative.

Overall, it must be said that The Shawshank Redemption is a strong adaptation of King’s book, but if it were much more faithful then it likely wouldn’t be as powerful. King’s movie adaptations have had a patchy record over the years, with some films straying too far from the source material and some failing to unlock their potential. The Shawshank Redemption gets it just right.