Looked like a stiff breeze would blow him over. That was my first impression of the man. .

             Andy glances up at the imposing walls above him - walls that will close in on his life - as he is marched in. In an admitting area, the prisoners meet Mr. Samuel Norton (Bob Gunton), the self-righteous, Bible-carrying Warden: .

             You are convicted felons. That's why they sent you to me. Rule Number One: No blasphemy. I'll not have the Lord's name taken in vain in my prison. The other rules you'll figure out as you go along. .

             Hadley cusses right into the face of a disrespectful prisoner who has asked: "When do we eat?" The guard inhumanely jabs his baton into the gut of the man ("you maggot-dick motherf--ker!"). The Warden finishes his short, pompous introduction: "I believe in two things - discipline and the Bible. Here you'll receive both. Put your trust in the Lord. Your ass belongs to me. Welcome to Shawshank." To remove all vestiges of their identity (or contamination) from the outer world, the new cons are made to undress, then hosed down in a steel cage with high pressure water spray, and deloused with scoops of white delousing powder. As part of their degrading processing, they are given prison clothes and a Bible, and marched exposed and naked to their individual cells, their new homes in the cellblock- a three-tiered structure of concrete and steel. .

             The first night's the toughest, no doubt about it. They march you in naked as the day you were born, skin burning and half blind from that delousing s--t they throw on you, and when they put you in that cell, when those bars slam home, that's when you know it's for real. Old life blown away in the blink of an eye. Nothing left but all the time in the world to think about it. Most new fish come close to madness the first night. Somebody always breaks down crying. Happens every time. The only question is, who's it gonna be? It's as good a thing to bet on as any, I guess.