St. Peter's Gate
Red formally arrives at the threshold to the “land” of the soul, where, unlike Shawshank, there is truly a form of dynamic “Hope.”
After Red’s successful parole there are two indicators (one explicit, the other implicit) demonstrating his transition from Inferno to Purgatory. Overtly, the image from the movie of a guard with a gun, standing next to a doorway is a “spot on match” to Dore’s classic drawing of this scene in the Divine Comedy where Virgil and Dante approach St. Peter’s Gate and encounter an Angel with a sword guarding the threshold to Purgatory.
We might note parenthetically, that when Brooks was paroled, he never passed through this “narrow gate.”
