American Rhetoric: Movie Speech

"The Shawshank Redemption" (1994)

Ellis Boyd 'Red' Redding Addresses the Parole Board for the Final Time

Contains profanity

Parole Board Interviewer: Please, sit down. Ellis Boyd Redding, your files say you've served 40 years of a life sentence. You feel you've been rehabilitated?

 

 

Redding: Rehabilitated? Well, now, let me see. You know, I don't have any idea what that means.

Parole Board Interviewer: Uh, well, it means you're ready to rejoin society --

Redding: -- I know what you think it means, sonny. To me, it's just a made up word, a politician's word, so that young fellas like yourself can wear a suit and a tie and have a job. What do you really wanna know? Am I sorry for what I did?

 

Parole Board Interviewer: Well, are you?

Redding: There's not a day goes by I don't feel regret. Not because I'm in here, or because you think I should. I look back on the way I was then, a young, stupid kid who committed that terrible crime. I wanna talk to him. I wanna try to talk some sense to him -- tell him the way things are. But I can't. That kid's long gone and this old man is all that's left. I gotta live with that.

 

Rehabilitated? It's just a bullshit word. So you go on and stamp your form, sonny, and stop wasting my time. Because to tell you the truth, I don't give a shit.

 

Parole Board Interviewer: [Stamp: APPROVED]