Andy guilty?

**CruelPuppet** · August 14th, 2009

Aw, why'd you spoil it. You could have just said "Yes, the story tells you whether or not Andy is guily."

**cwalrus** · August 20th, 2009

Of course if Andy was guilty, the story would have a completely new meaning. I don't think I would like it as much as I do if Andy was guilty because he'd be cheating the consequences of his actions instead of finally achieving the freedom that was unjustly taken from him.

What might have been more interesting perhaps is if Andy was so drunk that he didn't remember whether or not he committed the murders, but I think if that was the case, he might have not have been as determined to escape from the beginning.

The one part of the story that struck me as somewhat convenient was the friend who setup the alternate identity and wealth for Andy was he escaped, but I suppose SK put that in their to make Andy more motivated to escape than the other convicts and make Andy less likely to fall victim to that "insider" mentality that Red warns us about throughout the story. It was important not just that Andy escape but that he had something to escape to rather than just living the rest of his life on the run, which would have put limits on his freedom.

**SeleneM1** · October 11th, 2011

What was more "convenient" was the notion in the book that Red could somehow fit a 100+ page manuscript up the "back door" and smuggle it out of the prison. Ahem. It would have been more believable if they'd left that part out and simply had him writing it at the end of the events.

Another way of reading Andy's guilt/not guilt that I just thought of...

**spoiler**

Blatch is almost literally described as a "green-eyed monster" in the book. Andy is a "good con" who's innocent, and Blatch is the "worst" con, who goes to jail for crimes he has committed, but almost certainly not for other crimes. That is, he went down for robbery but not murder, when Tommy knew him.

Because a great deal of the story takes place with Red as third-hand narrator...It's not much of a stretch to read it as Blatch is sort of the dark side to Andy, a Hyde to the mild-mannered Jekyll that Andy is in every day life. If that's the case, then maybe Blatch didn't really exist, and he was just an embodiment of Andy's drunkenness and jealousy.