Carving your Name in Stone

The theme of names is significant in Shawshank Redemption. Naming serves as the way toward the connection that is key to maintaining hope.

Andy asks the name of the inmate who was killed during his first night in the jail. This shows his attempt to locate and place the man, and through that location in particular, to love him.

Andy asks Red what his name means in an early scene. Red sort of brushes off the question, but, nonetheless seems to sense the significance of the questions--that Andy is making a real attempt to know him through knowing the history of his name.

It is through carving his own name in the wall, in a manly act of self-assertion that establishes his identity in his place, that Andy first gets the idea of the means of escape. It is through placing himself actively in the prison that he keeps alive the hope of escape.

Brooks carves his name in the wall of the halfway house as a last act of self-assertion, of which his suicide is a part (or, at least, is a last attempt that coincides with his suicide to make himself known).

Finally, Red carves his name in the wall beside Brooks's. This provides a contrast between Brooks's death and Red's attempt at new life through the risk involved in a trip to which one does not know the end.

Naming, knowing the names of others, and (especially) carving one's name in a wall, are all symbols for and instances of the connection of friendship that is necessary in order to maintain hope. Carving one's name may be the most manly act; it is what Mansfield talks about when he discusses leaving one's mark on the world.

*Note: it is difficult to deal with gender issues in this film, as there is a conspicuous lack of women present. Women are: the cheating seducers, the poor bakers, the posters on the wall of the men, and the one's who sing and toss their hair. There is something about women that is obviously objectified, but there is also something about them that is offered as something to pursue and work toward.