The Shawshank Redemption screenplay beat sheet

This is the Shawshank Redemption screenplay broken into its working parts, a beat sheet of the script from first scene to last: four acts and an epilogue, every sequence inside them, and the beat that turns each one, with a minute mark against the film. It was first published in 2013 and the structure has not needed changing since. The dialogue that carries each beat is quoted where a single line does the work; the rest is described.

The nine-line summary at the top is the short version. The runtime spine below it shows where the structural beats fall across the film’s length and why the fourth act belongs to a different character. The full beat sheet of the Shawshank Redemption script follows, sequence by sequence. For the argument about why the structure works and what Darabont cut to get it there, see the Shawshank Redemption analysis.

The short version

The story in nine lines

The signature section

The runtime spine: where the beats fall

Read top to bottom, the spine is the length of the film and of the script behind it. Each band is an act; the colour of the band moves from institutional grey to the blue of the Pacific as the film does. Andy’s story resolves inside the first three bands. The fourth belongs to Red, and it turns on its own beats.

Act by act

What each act is doing

Act I: the price of innocence and the seed of hope

Andy is found guilty for the murder of his wife and her lover, and is thrown into Shawshank for life. He attempts to adapt to prison life by picking up a hobby chiseling rocks.

The first act covers Andy Dufresne’s conviction and his introduction to the brutal world of Shawshank prison, which serves as the inciting incident. The new inmates are immediately lectured by Warden Norton, establishing the themes of discipline and institutional ownership. Andy witnesses the fatal beating of the “fat man” by Captain Hadley but remains stoic, costing Red a lost bet and marking Andy’s first stand (Sequence II). Andy is beaten and raped by the Sisters (Sequence III). The act culminates in the end of act one turn when Andy asks Red for a small rock hammer, signaling his choice to pick up a hobby and quietly begin adapting to, and subtly working against, his life sentence.

Act II-A: the trial of integration and the dawn of value

Andy finds friends and enemies within the prison walls.

The first half of the second act details Andy’s trials of survival and his strategic ascent within the prison hierarchy. While tarring a roof (the first gamble), Andy risks his life to offer Captain Hadley tax advice, asking only for beer for his fellow inmates, which fosters his first true friendships. Following a severe beating by Bogs and the Sisters (the beating), Hadley retaliates by crippling Bogs, and the Sisters never bother Andy again, demonstrating his secured, if dangerous, value to the guards. Andy is installed in the prison library, where he begins writing letters for funds and, most significantly, is used by Warden Norton to manage and launder the prison’s illicit financial operations. The act culminates in the internal midpoint: the tragedy of Brooks Hatlen’s institutionalization and suicide, which forces Andy to see the cost of staying.

Act II-B: escalation, betrayal, and mandated escape

Andy discovers hope through literature and music, sharing with his fellow inmates. When the Warden discovers his talents as a banker, he uses Andy to launder dirty money. Andy mentors a young inmate who could prove his innocence, but the Warden silences it.

Act II-B deepens the thematic conflict and ratchets the plot toward the final crisis. Andy receives funds for the library and, in his first major act of defiance, locks himself in an office and plays a duet from The Marriage of Figaro over the PA system (external midpoint). It is his assertion of inner freedom and hope, set against Red’s pessimism. Andy fully commits to running the Warden’s scams, creating the alias Randall Stevens to clean the money. The crisis is triggered by the arrival of Tommy Williams (Sequence III), who reveals that a former cellmate confessed to murdering Andy’s wife. Andy reports this, desperate for exoneration, but Warden Norton refuses to help, needing Andy for the laundering. Norton’s corruption becomes irredeemable when he has Tommy killed and threatens Andy, marking plot point two and structurally mandating Andy’s long-planned escape.

Act III: the climax of justice and physical liberation

Andy decides to break out of Shawshank. He escapes and brings down all the corruption at Shawshank.

After sixty days in solitary and the realization that he is trapped, Andy makes the final internal decision to act. He uses the storm to mask the sounds of his escape (climax), crawls through five hundred yards of sewage pipe and emerges washed clean by the rain. The resolution details the plan’s execution: Andy, in the Warden’s suit, assumes the identity of Randall Stevens, withdraws the laundered money, and mails the ledger and a note to the newspaper. The police investigation that follows leads to Warden Norton’s suicide and Captain Hadley’s arrest, confirming Andy’s complete victory over the corrupt institution.

Act IV: thematic payoff and the coda of shared freedom

Red is paroled after 40 years at Shawshank. He gets a job at a grocery store, but struggles. Remembering Andy’s proposal, he breaks his parole and reunites with Andy in Mexico.

The fourth act shifts focus entirely to Red and closes the film’s argument. Red is granted parole after forty years, finally giving a truthful, unrehearsed answer about his regret to the parole board. He struggles with life outside (Sequence I), feeling the same terror and institutional dependency that doomed Brooks Hatlen. Red finds Andy’s message and money beneath the black volcanic rock in the hayfield. He then makes his ultimate choice, the point past which he cannot go back, by breaking parole and traveling to Zihuatanejo. The act concludes with the reunion on the beach, confirming the shared victory of hope.

Sequence by sequence

Full beat sheet

Every sequence of the Shawshank Redemption script, in order. Minute marks are rounded up to the whole minute. Structural beats are named for what they do in the story; sequences are given in italics as one-line summaries, then broken into the beats that make them. Where a single line of dialogue carries the beat, it is quoted; longer exchanges are described.

Act I

Act I

Sequence I

Act I of the Shawshank Redemption script. Andy Dufresne is found guilty of the murder of his wife and her lover. He is sentenced to life in prison.

1 — “If I Didn’t Care” by The Ink Spots plays over a car radio. Andy Dufresne, boozed-up, pulls a pistol from the glove compartment.

5–7 — Andy stands trial for the murder of his wife and her lover. He pleads his innocence; the court finds him guilty and sentences him to two life terms.

Sequence II

With a group of new arrivals, Andy enters Shawshank, taunted by inmates. Red bets his friends Andy will be the first to break down. That night a new inmate breaks down and is beaten to death in front of the cell block by Captain Hadley. Red loses the bet: Andy didn’t make a sound.

11 — Inciting incident: Andy enters Shawshank. Red tells us he was a banker.

12 — Red and crew gamble on which new inmate will break down first. Red bets on Andy.

15 — Warden Norton lectures the new inmates. Two things he believes in: discipline and the Bible.

20 — One of the new inmates, the fat man, breaks down his first night in the cell. Captain Hadley beats him senseless in front of the entire cell block.

21 — First stand: Andy doesn’t break down.

Sequence III

After discovering the fat man died from Hadley’s beating, Andy asks Red for a rock hammer. When Red asks what it is for, Andy says he wants to chisel rocks.

22 — Andy finds a maggot in his food and befriends Brooks, who feeds it to the crow in his coat pocket, Jake.

24 — Andy learns the fat man died of Hadley’s beating.

29 — End of act one turn: Andy asks Red for a rock hammer.

Andy chooses to pick up a hobby chiseling rocks and adapt to life in prison.

Act II-A

Act II-A

Sequence I

Act II-A of the script. Andy receives the rock hammer from Red. Later, he is raped by the Sisters.

31 — Andy receives the rock hammer.

33 — Andy is beaten and raped by the Sisters.

Sequence II

While tarring a roof, Andy risks his life with a tax proposition to Captain Hadley. He asks nothing for himself, only beers for his fellow inmates.

38 — First gamble: On a work detail tarring a roof, Andy overhears Hadley complaining about the taxes on an inheritance. Andy breaks the rules and approaches, angering Hadley, and is nearly thrown off the roof. At the last second he tells Hadley he can keep the money tax-free and offers to set up the gift. In return he asks for beer for the workers.

40 — The inmates drink beer without Andy. Heywood, once hostile, offers him one. Andy declines: he gave up drinking.

Andy grows: alcohol played a large role in his incarceration.

Sequence III

Andy discovers the wall chips away under the rock hammer. He asks Red for a poster to cover the hole he intends to dig. On the way back to his cell he is nearly beaten to death by Bogs and the Sisters. Time passes, and Andy returns from the infirmary to find a Rita Hayworth poster from Red.

42 — Late at night, Andy writes his name on the wall of his cell with the rock hammer.

43 — Andy approaches Red during a screening of Gilda and asks for Rita Hayworth.

45 — The beating: Andy is beaten within inches of his life by Bogs and the Sisters. He spends a month in the infirmary.

47 — Bogs is beaten by Hadley for sending Andy to the infirmary.

49 — Back from the infirmary, Andy finds a Rita Hayworth poster in his cell from Red.

Sequence IV

Andy narrowly avoids discovery of his plan by the Warden and Captain Hadley. The Warden gives Andy a new job in the library with Brooks.

52 — Andy’s cell is tossed by the Warden and Hadley. The Warden knows Andy is good with numbers; Andy impresses him with his knowledge of the Bible. Norton notices the Rita Hayworth poster, disapproves, and lets it slide.

53 — The Warden gives Andy a new job working with Brooks in the library.

Sequence V

Andy writes for funds to expand the Shawshank library. As time passes he gains the trust of the Warden and the guards by doing their taxes.

57 — With the Warden’s permission, Andy writes to the state for library funds, a letter a week.

58 — Year after year, Andy does taxes for the prison guards, and for the Warden.

Sequence VI

After being granted parole, Brooks attempts to kill Heywood. Andy learns that the longer he stays at Shawshank, the more frightening freedom becomes.

59 — Brooks holds a knife to Heywood’s throat; Andy and Red talk him down. His parole has come through, and after most of a lifetime inside, the real world terrifies him.

61 — Midpoint, internal: Around Andy and the crew, Red explains what has happened to Brooks.

Andy realizes the longer he stays at Shawshank, the more frightening freedom becomes.

Sequence VII

Brooks leaves Shawshank. Institutionalized for most of his life, he cannot adapt to life outside and hangs himself.

61 — Brooks releases Jake and leaves Shawshank.

63 — Brooks finds the outside world too fast. He bags groceries at the Foodway and thinks about robbing the store, anything to get back to what he knows.

66 — Brooks carves his name into the beam of his room at the Brewer and hangs himself.

Sequence VIII

Andy receives funds, books and music for the library. In his first act of defiance against the Warden, he locks himself in an office and plays Mozart over the prison PA.

67 — Andy receives funds, books and records for the Shawshank library from the state.

69 — Midpoint, external: Andy puts on the duettino from The Marriage of Figaro, locks the office door, and broadcasts it over the PA for the entire prison.

72 — The Warden has Hadley break down the door. Andy gets two weeks in the hole.

Act II-B

Act II-B

Sequence I

Act II-B of the Shawshank Redemption script. Andy expresses hope, in contrast to Red’s pessimism, which is hardened by another denial of Red’s parole. The two men reconcile, exchanging gifts.

74 — Andy finds his footing: During chow, Andy talks with Red and the crew about music, and about what the prison cannot take from a man. Red’s answer is that hope is no use on the inside; Andy asks whether that is what Brooks believed.

75 — Red sits in front of the parole board after thirty years of a life sentence. Denied.

76 — Andy gives Red a harmonica. Red gives Andy a Marilyn Monroe poster for his tenth anniversary at Shawshank.

Sequence II

Time passes. Andy grows the prison library and cooks the Warden’s books, making him a millionaire.

78 — Andy gains leverage: Andy receives state funds and grows the library into the best prison library in New England. The inmates now have books and music.

81 — The Warden uses inmates as contract labor outside the prison, the Inside Out program, and takes kickbacks.

84 — Andy works the Warden’s books, cleaning the money through a fictitious person named Randall Stevens. He tells Red he will have made the Warden a millionaire by retirement.

Sequence III

Tommy Williams arrives and changes Andy’s life when he tells the story of meeting the man who killed Andy’s wife. Andy pleads with the Warden for help; the Warden throws him in the hole.

85 — Tommy Williams, a young criminal who has been in and out of prisons all over New England, arrives.

88 — Andy teaches Tommy to read so he can sit for his high school diploma.

89 — The sixties. Raquel Welch is now the poster on Andy’s wall.

91 — Red tells Tommy why Andy is in prison. Tommy is shocked.

92 — End of act two turn: Tommy tells Andy and Red about Elmo Blatch, a former cellmate who described murdering a golf pro and the woman he was with, and boasted that her husband, a banker, took the fall.

94 — Decision: Desperate to clear his name, Andy takes Tommy’s story to the Warden and begs for help. The Warden refuses; he needs Andy for the laundering. When Andy insists the laundering will stay secret, the Warden explodes and sends him to the hole for a month.

Act III

Act III

Sequence I

Act III of the script. Andy, at his lowest, tries to quit doing the Warden’s dirty work, to no avail. He is stuck and there is no way out.

96 — In the hole, Andy gets word that Tommy has earned his diploma.

99 — The Warden has Tommy killed.

100 — The Warden visits Andy in the hole. He calls Tommy’s death an escape attempt. Andy says he is done running the scams. The Warden tells him nothing stops: no more protection from the guards, back to the general population, and the library sealed off brick by brick. He gives Andy another month to think about it.

Sequence II

Andy makes the decision to escape Shawshank, and tells Red some key information.

104 — After sixty days in the hole, Andy tells Red where he would go if he ever got out: Zihuatanejo, on the Pacific coast of Mexico. Red tells him Mexico is down there and he is in here, and that is the way it is.

Andy decides to break out of Shawshank.

107 — Andy describes a hayfield near Buxton with a long rock wall and an oak at the north end. Under a piece of black volcanic glass there will be something waiting for Red, if he ever gets out. Andy leaves Red perplexed and worried.

109 — Red tells the crew he is worried. Heywood mentions that, at Andy’s request, he delivered him six feet of rope. They fear Andy means to hang himself.

110 — Andy finishes the Warden’s books for the night and polishes the Warden’s shoes.

Sequence III

Andy begins his escape.

111 — Lights out. Andy takes the rope from under his pillow. A storm closes in.

112 — No way back: The cells open for morning roll call. Andy does not come out.

113 — The Warden finds Andy’s shoes in his shoebox.

115 — Furious that Andy has vanished, the Warden throws Andy’s chess pieces at the Raquel Welch poster and finds a hole in the wall. Andy has tunneled out. Red’s narration: in 1966, all they found was a muddy set of prison clothes, a bar of soap, and a rock hammer worn nearly to the nub.

Sequence IV

The full account of Andy’s escape.

116 — Flashback: Andy, with his new rock hammer, tries to carve his name in the cell wall and finds the wall breaks away easily.

118 — Flashback: on his final night, Andy walks to his cell wearing the Warden’s shoes and the Warden’s suit under his prison clothes.

120 — Flashback: to hide the noise, Andy waits for thunder and breaks open a sewage pipe with a rock. He crawls five hundred yards through it.

120 — Climax: Flashback: Andy crawls out of the pipe a free man. Rain washes the filth off him.

Epilogue

Epilogue

Sequence I

The Shawshank Redemption script’s epilogue. The aftermath of Andy’s escape: he makes off with the Warden’s money, and the Warden kills himself before the police can arrest him.

122 — Andy, in the Warden’s suit, visits the bank. As Randall Stevens, he cleans out the account. Red puts the total at better than $370,000 of the Warden’s money.

123 — Andy mails the Warden’s ledger and a note to the Portland newspaper.

124 — With the police at his door, the Warden shoots himself. Hadley is taken away in tears.

125 — Red receives an unsigned postcard from Fort Hancock, Texas. He knows Andy made it.

126 — A free man, Andy drives along Mexico’s Pacific coast toward Zihuatanejo.

Act IV: Red’s story

Act IV (Red’s story)

Sequence I

Act IV of the Shawshank Redemption script. Red is paroled. He attempts to adapt to normal life, as Brooks did, and finds the same fear.

128 — Red finds his footing: Yet again, Red sits in front of the parole board. Asked whether he feels rehabilitated, he tells them the truth: he regrets what he did every day, the kid who did it is long gone, and the word is meaningless.

129 — Red’s turn: Red’s parole is approved. He leaves after forty years.

130 — Red’s decision: Red rents Brooks’s old room and works Brooks’s old job at the grocery store. He admits there is no way he will make it outside; all he thinks about is how to break parole so they will send him back. One thing stops him: a promise he made to Andy.

Sequence II

Red follows Andy’s directions to join him on a beach in Mexico. They are both free men.

136 — Red’s no way back: Along the rock wall, Red finds a box under the black volcanic glass. Inside: money, and a letter from Andy asking him to join him in Mexico.

137 — Red carves into the beam beside Brooks’s line. It now reads that Brooks was here, and so was Red.

138 — Red’s climax: Red breaks parole and buys a bus ticket.

139 — In Zihuatanejo, Red reunites with Andy.

139 — The end:

Story years

The Shawshank Redemption timeline, 1946 to 1967

The film’s own dating, from Red’s narration and the years the Shawshank Redemption script writes into its scene headings. Twenty-one years of story in two hours and change.

1946 — The night of the murders. Andy, drunk in his car with a gun.

1947 — Trial. Two life sentences. Andy arrives at Shawshank. Red’s first parole hearing on screen.

1949 — Spring: the plate-factory roof, the beer, and the beating that ends the Sisters.

1950 — Tax season for the guards. The library job with Brooks. The letters to the state begin.

1954 — Brooks holds a knife to Heywood’s throat. His parole comes through. The Brewer, and the beam.

1955 — The library funds arrive. Mozart over the PA. Two weeks in the hole.

1957 — Red’s second parole hearing: thirty years served. Denied. The harmonica.

1960 — The library rebuilt, Red as head carpenter.

1963 — The Brooks Hatlen Memorial Library opens. Norton’s Inside Out program, the year Kennedy was shot.

1965 — Tommy Williams arrives.

1966 — Elmo Blatch. Tommy killed. Andy escapes. Norton dead.

1967 — Red’s third hearing: forty years. Paroled. Buxton, the bus, Zihuatanejo.

Questions about the script

The Shawshank Redemption script: reader questions

About the screenplay

About the story

Read the full Shawshank Redemption analysis: the four-act structure, the deleted scenes, and the ending Darabont never wrote