In Stephen King’s novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, narrator Ellis Redding uses the nickname Red.
Red is the story’s first-person narrator and a long-term inmate at Shawshank State Penitentiary. He is known for obtaining contraband for other prisoners, which makes him the person Andy Dufresne approaches when he wants items such as a rock hammer and posters.
The nickname is sometimes associated more strongly with Morgan Freeman’s performance in the 1994 film The Shawshank Redemption. In the film, Red jokes that he is called that because he is Irish, even though Freeman is not Irish. The novella also calls the narrator Red, but the character’s background and several details differ between the book and film.
The story was published in 1982 in King’s collection Different Seasons. It is one of four novellas in that collection and is notable for being a realistic prison story rather than supernatural horror.