Andy Dufresne

Anfy Dufresne
Biographical information
Status	Alive
Family information
Relatives	Linda Dufresne (wife; Deceased)
Affiliation
Occupation	Banker
Movie info
Portrayed by	Tim Robbins

Andrew "Andy" Dufresne is a wrongfully-accused prisoner and the main protagonist in Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, as well as its film adaptation, where he was played by Tim Robbins. Andy is portrayed as intelligent, quiet and very honest, although very witty and personable when he wants to be. This is a great contrast to the other inmates, who are hardened criminals.

Character Biography

Andy was a young, successful banker who was wrongly convicted of murdering his wife and her lover based on circumstantial evidence. Andy was incarcerated at Shawshank Prison in 1948, where he wore the prisoner number 81433-SHNK. Like almost everyone else in Shawshank, Dufresne insists on his innocence, and nobody believes him. As a free man, Andy had been a rock-hound, and now he has immense amounts of free time on his hands, so he asks a fellow inmate who can smuggle contraband into the prison named Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding to get him a rock hammer, a tool he uses to shape the rocks he finds in the exercise yard into small sculptures like chess pieces.

The next item he orders from Red is a large poster of Rita Hayworth. When taking the order, Red reflects that Andy is, quite uncharacteristically, excited like a teenager about the poster, but does not think more of it at the time. One spring day, Andy and Red and some other prisoners are tarring the roof of the prison license plate factory when Andy overhears a particularly nasty and sadistic guard named Byron Hadley griping over the amount of tax he will have to pay inheritance from his estranged brother.

Andy approaches Byron, almost getting thrown off the roof in the process, and tells him that he can legally shelter the money from taxation by giving it to his wife. Andy offers to help the guard to prepare the necessary paperwork for the transaction, in exchange for some beer for the other prisoners on the roof. Hadley agrees and Andy later begins doing taxes at no charge for the entire prison staff, later being moved out of the laundry by the warden himself.

Andy would later be forced by the warden to handle his money laundering from cash illegally skimmed off the top of community service projects. Andy created a false identity for the money to be traced back to and was involved in a number of projects at the prison, including making the Brooks Hatlen Memorial Library. Andy became friends with most of the inmates, although Red always remained his closest friend.

When Brooks is paroled, Andy takes charge of the library and starts to send applications to the Maine state Senate for money for books.

For a long time he gets no response to his weekly letters until the Senate finally relents, thinking Andy will stop requesting funds. Instead of ceasing his letter writing, he starts writing twice as often. His diligent work results in a major expansion of the library's collection, and he also helps a number of prisoners earn equivalence diplomas, preparing them for life after parole.

Before being sentenced to life Andy managed, with the help of his closest friend, to sell off his assets and invest them under a pseudonym. This made-up person, Peter Stevens, has a driver's license, social security card, and other credentials. The documents required to claim Peter Stevens's assets and assume his identity are in a safe deposit box in a Portland bank; the key to the box is hidden under a black rock in a rock wall lining a hay field in the small town of Buxton, not too far from Shawshank.

After eighteen years in prison, Andy shares the information with Red, describing exactly how to find the place and how one day "Peter Stevens" will own a small seaside resort hotel in Mexico. Andy also tells Red that he could use a man who knows how to get things. Red, somewhat confused about why Andy has confided this information in him, reflects on Andy's continued ability to surprise.

Andy after breaking out of Shawshank Prison.

One morning after he has been incarcerated for nearly twenty-seven years, Andy literally disappears from his locked cell. After searching the prison grounds and surrounding area without finding any sign of an escaped man, the warden looks in Andy's cell and discovers that the poster on his wall covers a man-sized hole.

Andy had used his rock hammer — and a replacement when the original wore down — not just to shape rocks, but to dig a hole, incredibly painstakingly and over twenty years, through the wall. Once through the wall, he broke into a sewage pipe by synchronizing his strikes with lightning, before crawling through it for some 500 yards, emerged into a field beyond prison's outer perimeter and vanished. His rock-hammer and prison uniform are found outside the pipe.

A video of Andy escaping can be found here

The next morning, around the time Andy's escape was discovered and the guards began looking for him, Andy went to several banks as "Peter Stevens" to collect several deposits he'd be laundering for Norton all those years and mailed evidence of Norton's crimes to the press, including  his own laundering and Tommy's murder, leading to Hadley's arrest and Norton's suicide. 

A few weeks later, Red gets a blank postcard from a small town called Fort Hancock, Texas, near the Mexican border, and surmises that Andy crossed the border there. Red later finds the tin that Andy told him about and inside finds a letter addressed to him from "Peter Stevens" inviting him to join him at the town he had told him about. With the letter are twenty fifty dollar bills ($1000), and Red leaves to follow Andy to Mexico. There they both meet again and they happily embrace.

Andy's Posters

• Rita Hayworth
• Marilyn Monroe
• Racquel Welch
• Linda Ronstadt

Appearances

• "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption"
• The Shawshank Redemption
• Mentioned in "Apt Pupil"