The April Blogging Challenge : The ABC’s Of Stephen King

The April blogging challenge starts here. For those who are unaware, the idea behind the challenge is to blog every day of the month, excluding Sundays. For each day, the post must be inspired by a different letter of the alphabet. The theme I have chosen for the month is to write briefly about some of my favorite Stephen King characters.

I thought I would start off the challenge for this month with an easy one, probably one of my favorite Stephen King characters to make their way to the big screen. Andy Dufresne is an unlikely King character, just as the Shawshank Redemption is an unlikely King story. Still, he possesses all of the qualities necessary for gripping reading or movie viewing. He is a character that you can immediately feel sorry for and really just enjoy being around, even if it’s the proximity attachment from behind the barrier of the pages of the books or the screen on your television.

Everyone loves a story where the people who commit the worst kind of acts end up getting what is owed to them. We love seeing the person who is wronged getting to come out on top at the end and against all odds. It’s hard to watch the last twenty minutes of the Shawshank Redemption and not have a smile on your face, for the justice that you get to see delivered.

There are so many instances throughout King’s work in which the darker aspects of the story rules supreme so I made a conscious decision to focus on a story and a character that had a more uplifting arc. The story of The Shawshank Redemption, in book or film is a heavy meal of tragedy, followed by a quick but potent course of triumphalism. Do yourself a favor. If you haven’t read Rita Hayworth & The Shawshank Redempton, get yourself a copy of Different Seasons and give it a read. And if you haven’t seen the movie, definitely make the time for (in my opinion), one of the most successful adaptations of Stephen King’s works to the cinematic realm.

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