One of the most influential factors in storytelling is the voice telling the story. Switching perspective or narration style halfway through a story or even recreating a story from a different perspective can completely change how the story is told. How events are explained in the narrative will depend on how that narrator sees reality, what factors most impact them, and their limited perspective, making most character-based narrators unreliable. When a narrator is unreliable, they might let their opinions infiltrate how the story is told. Otherwise, due to their lack of knowledge and limited perspective, what they say can be lacking or untrue. All this to say, it is hard to trust a narrator who is within the story, particularly if they are not the central figure.

Usually, when a narrator is a part of the story, they play the protagonist. Easy examples can be seen in movies like Deadpool, Stand by Me, and Mean Girls. These narrators are limited by the nature of being someone the narrative is happening to and around, making them potentially unreliable because of lack of knowledge. However, taking the whole concept a step further, there are also many films where the narrator is a character within the story but not the protagonist. These ‘external narrators’ are even less reliable because they are bystanders to the plot or interact minimally with the main storyline. One of the most famous examples of this narrator style is the 1994 film, The Shawshank Redemption.

In the rest of this article, we will address how an external narrator is used in this iconic movie and its influence on the storyline, making it one of the most entertaining styles of storytelling. As a warning, there will be spoilers or hints about the film’s outcome in this article so read with caution.

The Shawshank Redemption, directed by Frank Darabont and starring Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman, and Bob Gunton, follows the story of Andy Dufresne, a disgraced banker who was sentenced to life in prison after being accused of murdering his wife. In prison, Andy becomes close friends with Ellis “Red” Redding, who is known as a smuggler who will get prisoners whatever they want from the outside world. As the years go by, Andy begins to make a life for himself by doing the banking for all the guards, including helping keep books on illegal funds for the warden and also working on projects like helping get other prisoners educations and creating a library inside the prison. Around twenty years into his sentence, Andy discovers the man who killed his wife is still alive, but, when he goes to the warden to attempt to have the whole mess reevaluated and sorted out, the warden destroys all evidence and kills the key witness in an attempt to keep Andy, who has become very useful, inside. At the end of the film, it’s revealed that Andy has been for the past 20 years using a very small tool he got from Red to slowly dig a hole through the wall of the prison through which he escapes, turns in the warden, takes all the money he had been managing for him, and goes to live in Mexico where Red later comes to join him in the conclusion of Andy’s 20-year long scheme. 

While Andy is the focus of this film, the entire plot is narrated by Morgan Freeman’s character, Red, reporting to the audience what he sees about Andy’s life. Andy is a completely closed character. The only insight the audience gets into Andy’s mind is what is told to Red or just Red’s observations about how Andy must be feeling. In doing this, we have an external narrator who only sees what Andy is showing to the rest of the world. In having the external narrator, we never really know if what Andy is telling Red is the truth or if Red is always making the correct conclusions about Andy’s actions. While Red and Andy are good friends, there is no way to know if Red could understand Andy completely. 

In Red being an unreliable narrator, the story left a lot more up in the air. Going into the film, the audience doesn’t know if Andy killed his wife; we only see what Andy looks like coming into the prison and what Red can get out of him at the beginning of the movie. It was a brilliant choice adding this uncertainty at the beginning, with the prisoners all agreeing that none of them in Shawshank committed their crimes making the audience question who to believe. We also don’t have a clear idea why Andy decides to put so much work into adapting to life in prison. As seen by the thrilling conclusion, his end goal was to somehow break out and use the warden’s illegal funds to start a new life for himself, but, until this is all revealed to Red, the audience has no clear idea of Andy’s intentions besides making his life a little easier with the protection of the warden and his guards. Most movies act in this same linear fashion of keeping key information from the audience to be revealed slowly through to the climax, in this way The Shawshank Redemption is not unique. What makes it special is that we as an audience put our faith in Red to tell us the story but in all honesty, Red doesn’t know all the facts. He emphasizes points that are less important while skimming over key details. For instance, the posters of women that Red gets for Andy are just a silly little side note throughout the film to mark the passing of time. In reality, they were used to hide Andy’s attempts to break through the wall. We trusted Red to know this kind of thing in his relationship with Andy, but the shock for the audience and Red at these plot points makes this movie and others with a similar external narration style so exciting. 

As a critical and commercial success, The Shawshank Redemption has become a timeless classic. The choice to have an external in-story narrator who reports what he sees about the protagonist’s life leads to a much more thrilling climax, breaking the trust and blowing the minds of the audience and the other characters in the film. While this is one of the key factors that makes this story so iconic, it is by far not the only one that implements this narration style. Pieces of media like Sherlock and The Great Gatsby have the same storytelling method, showing the audience a limited scope of what is happening while forcing them to put all their trust into one ignorant unreliable narrator. Their view is narrowed by what they believe is important and simultaneously skip over key details that might alert viewers to the film’s resolution. External narration remains one of the most iconic and exciting storytelling tropes as it takes the audience on an emotional roller coaster that leaves them perplexed about who knows what is happening in a story.