The Shawshank Redemption

The Shawshank Redemption Irony

Suds on a Sunny Day (Situational Irony)

Andy, after giving Hadley financial advice, asks for three beers for every man he's working with in return for the information. The men enjoy cold beers under the hot sun on the roof where they are working, but Andy does not partake. His generosity is ironic, in that it is unclear why he would risk his life to ask for a favor from the guard if it was not a favor that he wanted to enjoy himself. In this moment, we see that Andy is an unusually generous person, made most happy by seeing that other people are enjoying themselves.

A Threat (situational irony)

Bogs and his gang of queens have Andy held down in the film projection room. He tells Andy he's going to put eight inches of a steel knife in his ear if he doesn't give him oral sex. The irony, Bogs finds out, is that if he puts that in Andy's ear, Andy's jaw will lock on whatever is in his mouth, and it will take a crowbar to open it up.

The Rock Hammer in the Bible (Situational and Verbal Irony)

After Andy escapes, Norton goes to consult his Bible, but he finds that his own copy has been switched out with Andy's. In the front cover, Andy has written, "You were right, Salvation lay within," which echoes some spiritual advice Norton gave him earlier. As the warden flips through the Bible, he finds a hole in the shape of the rock hammer in which Andy has been hiding his instrument of escape. In this moment, Andy has completely toyed with Norton's advice and turned it back on him, an ironic literalization of Norton's condescending advice. While Norton gave the advice with the expectation that it would lead Andy to give up hope of escape—since salvation lies "within," i.e., in one's mind rather than in external freedom, Andy flips the meaning, showing how he used the Bible, Norton's instrument of "internal" salvation, to hide his means of escape "within" it.

Andy gets the money (Dramatic and Situational Irony)

Before anyone else has caught up to Andy, we see him visiting the bank and taking out most of the money that Norton laundered for himself, using the alias that he himself created to open the fake account. In this moment, the viewer knows about Andy's whereabouts when the authorities do not, creating dramatic irony. Additionally, it is ironic that Andy ends up getting all of the money that he helped the corrupt warden put away for himself—an ingenious stroke of revenge for all of Norton's injustices.