Evan Adams #9/13

"One day in 1958 I looked at myself in a small shaving mirror I kept in my cell and saw a forty-year-old man looking back at me. A kid had come in back in 1938, a kid with a big mop of carroty red hair, half-crazy with remorse, thinking about suicide. That kid was gone. The red hair was going grey and starting to recede. There were crow's tracks around the eyes. On that day I could see an old man inside, waiting his time to come out. It scared me. Nobody wants to grow old in stir."

After all of the time Red has spent in jail, he has finally come to terms with himself. He realizes that throughout all of the trials and time he's spent in jail, he is not the same person he once was. The hard times of prison has aged him. This metamorphosis is not necessarily completely physical either. His young interior has changed as well. Prison has hardened him on the inside. He is not the same innocent person he was when he entered Shawshank. The painting I chose, entitled Aging Man, shows the many stages a young man takes to arrive at his elderly phase. It is representative of Red's transformation from his entrance to Shawshank, to the point in the story.

Book: King, Stephen. "The Shawshank Redemption." Different Seasons. New York: Viking, 1982. Print. (Page 49)
Image: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdd9YHuDkDfuL1w2LrzzZd5FQbR_Dq2cnv8XaydwNts_4GcRsnytILCnGSMNusRem3cxVTsivWI0K-IZAABFLuG1RKn_VSEh6aTALTAu2OUrYAUMm0t-6xaTtfSltvQA4i6yFQ90ygXMA/s640/aging-man.jpg