雅思阅读：肖申克的救赎

　　In 1947, Andy Dufresne , a banker in Maine, was convicted of murdering his wife and her lover, a golf pro. He was sentenced to two life sentences, and sent to the notoriously harsh Shawshank Prison. Andy always claimed his innocence, but his cold and measured demeanor led many to doubt his word.

　　During the first night, the chief guard Byron Hadley , savagely beat up a newly arrived inmate because of his crying complaining. Meanwhile Andy kept to himself even though during the day Ellis Redding , also known as Red, had bet against others that Andy would have been the one to break down first. That beating led to the new inmates death.

　　About a month later, Andy approached Red, who was known to run contraband inside the walls of Shawshank. He asked if Red could find him a rock hammer, an instrument he claimed necessary for his hobby in rock collecting. Though other prisoners considered Andy a really cold fish, Red saw something in Andy, and liked him from the start. Red thought Andy intended to use the hammer to engineer his escape one day but when the tool arrived seeing how small it was, Red put aside the thought that Andy could ever use it to dig his way out of prison.

　　Over the first two years of doing time, Andy worked in the prison laundry. He ended up attracting attention from the Sisters, a group of prisoners who sexually assaulted other prisoners, and was raped on a regular basis.

　　Red pulled some strings, and got Andy a break by getting him on a work detail tarring the roof of one of the prisons buildings. During the job one day, Andy overheard Hadley complaining about having to pay taxes for an upcoming inheritance. Andy approached, using his expertise as a banker to let Hadley know how he could shelter his money from the IRS. He said he would assist in exchange for some cold beers for his fellow inmates. Warden Norton heard about the help, and used a prison inspection to size him up.

　　Soon, after asking Red for Rita Hayworth, he was once more encountered by the Sisters. This time, he resisted, and was brutally beaten, putting him in the infirmary for a month. Boggs, the leader of the Sisters, spent a week in solitary. But when he came out, Hadley and his men were waiting in his cell. They beat him so bad he was left paralyzed, and transferred to a prison hospital upstate, and the Sisters never bothered Andy again. When Andy got out of the infirmary, he found a bunch of rocks and a poster of Rita Hayworth in his cell; presents from Red and his buddies.

　　Andy was sent to work with Brooks Hatlen , an aging inmate in the prison library, where he set up a make-shift desk to provide services to other guards including the warden with income tax returns and other financial advice. His practice became so appreciated that even guards from other prisons, when they came for inter-prison baseball matches, sought Andys advice as well.

　　After 6 years of writing letters, Andy received $200 from the state for the library, along with a collection of old books and records. He put a record of Mozart on a turntable and channelled the music through a PA system. He turned up the volume and locked the office where the record player was to prevent interference by the warden and guards. That stunt landed Andy in solitary for a week but he seemed unfazed. With the enlarged library and more materials, Andy began to teach those inmates who wanted to receive their high school diplomas.

　　Not long afterward, Brooks threatened to kill another prisoner in order to avoid getting paroled. Andy was able to talk him down. Brooks was paroled. He later sent a letter to his friends at Shawshank about how hard it was for an institutionalized prisoner to get by on the outside. In the flashback, it ends with him hanging himself at the halfway house where he was staying.

　　Warden Samuel Norton profited on Andys knowledge of bookkeeping and devised a scheme whereby he put prison inmates to work in projects which he won by outbidding other contractors . Occasionally, he let others get some contracts if they bribed him. Andy laundered money for the warden by setting up many accounts in different banks, along with several investments, using a fake identity: Randall Stephens. He shared the details only with his friend, Red, noting that he had to go to prison to learn how to be a criminal.

　　In 1965, a young prisoner named Tommy came to Shawshank. One day he happened to mention that some years ago, he had a cellmate who boasted about killing a man who was a pro golfer at the country club he worked at, along with his lover. The womans husband, a banker, had gone to prison for those murders. With this new information, Andy, full of hope, brought the matter to the wardens attention, expecting he could help him get another trial with Tommy as a witness. The reaction from Norton was the contrary of what Andy had hoped for. Fearing the end of the lucrative ill-gotten money that Andy was looking after for him, Norton had Tommy shot dead by Hadley under the guise of an escape attempt. Andy was sent to solitary confinement for 2 months to put him back in his place.

　　Afterwards, Andy returned to the usual daily life at Shawshank, a seemingly broken man. One day he laid his soul to Red, about how although he didnt kill his wife, his personality drove her away, which led to her death. He said if he ever got free, hed like to go to Zihuatanejo, a beach town on the Pacific coast of Mexico. He then told Red how he got engaged. He and his wife went up to a farm in Buxton, Maine, to a large oak tree at the end of a stone wall. The two made love under the tree, after which he proposed to her. He told Red that, if he should ever be paroled, he should look for that field, and that oak tree. There, under a large black volcanic rock that would look out of place, Andy had a box buried that he wanted Red to have. Andy refused to reveal what might be in that box.

　　One day Andy asked for rope, leading Red and his buddies to suspect he was going to commit suicide. At the end of the day, Norton asked Andy to shine his shoes for him and put his suit in for dry-cleaning before retiring for the night.

　　The following morning, Andy was not accounted for as usual from his cell. At the same time, Norton became alarmed when he found out Andys shoes were in his shoebox instead of his own. He rushed to Andys cell and demanded an explaination. Hadley brought in Red, but Red knew nothing of Andys plans either. Getting paranoid, Norton started throwing rocks at everyone. But when he threw it at Andys poster of Raquel Welch , the rock went right through and into the wall. Behind that poster was a tunnel big enough for a man to crawl through.

　　The previous night, it was storming. Andy wore Nortons shoes to his cell, figuring nobody would notice. He packed some papers and Nortons clothes into a plastic bag, tied it to himself with some rope, and escaped through his hole. He got down to a sewer main. Using a rock, he hit it in time with the lightning strikes and eventually burst it. He crawled 500 yards through raw sewage to a nearby river. There, he washed off and changed into the wardens clothes. All the authorities found were his prison uniform, a used bar of soap and one of his rock hammers beaten down to nearly nothing.

　　That morning, Andy walked into the Maine National Bank in Portland, where he had put Warden Nortons money. Using his assumed identity as Randall Stephens, and with all the necessary documentation, he walked out with a cashiers check. Before he left, he asked them to drop a package in the mail. He gathered up over $370,000 from a dozen area banks. As for the package, it was Warden Nortons books...and they went right to the Portland Daily Bugle newspaper.

　　Not long after, the police stormed Shawshank Prison. Hadley was arrested for murder; Red said he was taken away crying like a little girl. Warden Norton finally opened the safe, which he hadnt touched since Andy escaped, and instead of his books, he found the Bible he had given Andy...which he had used to conceal his rock hammer. Norton barricaded himself in his office, then put his gun under his chin, committing suicide.

　　Shortly after, Red received a postcard from Fort Hancock, Texas, with nothing written on it. Red took it as a sign that Andy made it into Mexico and was totally free. Red and his buddies would spend their time talking about Andys exploits , but Red just missed his friend.

　　At Reds next parole hearing in 1967, he talked to the parole board about how rehabilitated was a made-up word, and how he regretted his actions of the past. His parole was granted this time. He went to work at a grocery store, and stayed at the same halfway house Brooks had stayed in. He frequently walked by a pawn shop, which had several guns and compasses in the window. At times he would contemplate trying to get back into prison, but he remembered the promise he had made to Andy.

　　One day, with a compass he bought from the pawn shop, he followed Andys instructions, hitchhiking to Buxton and arriving at the stone wall he described. Just like Andy said, there was a large black stone. Under it was a lunch box containing a large sum of cash and instructions to find him. He said he needed somebody who could get things for a project of his.

　　Red violated parole and left the halfway house. He took a bus to Fort Hancock, where he crossed into Mexico. The two friends finally reunited on the beach of Zihuatanejo on the Pacific coast.

　　故事发生在1947年，银行家安迪因为妻子有婚外情，用枪杀死了她和她的情人，因此他被指控枪杀了妻子及其情人，安迪被判无期徙刑，这意味着他将在肖恩克监狱中渡过余生。阿瑞1927年因谋杀罪被判无期徙刑，数次假释都未获成功。他现在已经成为肖恩克监狱中的权威人物，只要你付得起钱，他几乎有办法搞到任何你想要的东西：香烟，糖果，酒，甚至是大麻。每当有新囚犯来的时候，大家就赌谁会在第一个夜晚哭泣。阿瑞认为弱不禁风、书生气时足的安迪一定会哭，结果安迪的沉默使他输掉了四包烟。但同时也使阿瑞对他另眼相看。

　　好长时间以来，安迪不和任何人接触，在大家报怨的同时，他在院子里很悠闲地散步，就象在公园里一样。一个月后，安迪请阿瑞帮他搞的第一件东西是一把小的鹤嘴锄，他的解释是他想雕刻一些小东西以消磨时光，并说他自己想办法逃过狱方的例行检查。不久，阿瑞就玩上了安迪刻的国际象棋。之后，安迪又搞了一幅丽塔海华丝的巨幅海报贴在了牢房的墙上。

　　一次，安迪和另几个犯人外出劳动，他无意间听到监狱官在讲有关上税的事。安迪说他有办法可以使监狱官合法地免去这一大笔税金，做为交换，他为十几个犯人朋友每人争得了两瓶Tiger啤酒。喝着啤酒，阿瑞说多年来，他又第一次感受到了自由的感觉。

　　由于安迪精通财务制度方面的的知识，很快使他摆脱了狱中繁重的体力劳动和其它变态囚犯的骚扰。不久，声名远扬的安迪开始为越来越多的狱警处理税务问题，甚至孩子的升学问题也来向他请教。同时安迪也逐步成为肖恩克监狱长沃登洗黑钱的重要工具。由于安迪不停地写信给州长，终于为监狱申请到了一小笔钱用于监狱图书馆的建设。监狱生活非常平谈，总要自己找一些事情来做。安迪听说阿瑞原来很喜欢吹口琴，就买了一把送给他。夜深人静之后，可以听到悠扬而轻微的口琴声回荡在监狱里。

　　一个年轻犯人的到来打破了安迪平静的狱中生活：这个犯人以前在另一所监狱服刑时听到过安迪的案子，他知道谁是真凶!但当安迪向监狱长提出要求重新审理此案时，却遭到了断然拒绝，并受到了单独禁闭两个月的严重惩罚。为了防止安迪获释，监狱不惜设计害死了知情人!

　　面对残酷的现实，安迪变得很消沉有一天，他对阿瑞说：如果有一天，你可以获得假释，一定要到某个地方替我完成一个心愿。那是我第一次和妻子约会的地方，把那里一棵大橡树下的一个盒子挖出来。到时个你就知道是什么了。当天夜里，风雨交加，雷声大作，已得到灵魂救赎的安迪越狱成功。

　　原来二十年来，安迪每天都在用那把小鹤嘴锄挖洞，然后用海报将洞口遮住。安迪出狱后，领走了部分监狱长存的黑钱，并告发了监狱长贪污受贿的真相。监狱长在自己存小账本的保险柜里见到的是安迪留下的一本圣经，里边挖空的部分放这一把几乎磨成圆头的鹤嘴锄。

　　阿瑞获释了，他在橡树下找到了一盒现金，两个老朋友终于在墨西哥阳光明媚的海滨重逢了。