1Reviews and everything / Green Mile - Book Report
.docAlex Kvartalny @ flamedragon27.blogspot.com
Group 501
Book Report on “Green Mile”
People hurt the ones they love. That's how it is all around the world. - John Coffey
Stephen King was born in 1947 and is considered to be one of the most successful American authors. His horror and fantasy works have enjoyed tremendous popularity. He is most known for putting ordinary people into twisted situations and creating terrifying scenes out of this combination. King’s thrilling plots and prolific output helped reestablish horror fiction as a vital literary genre in the late 20th century.
Born in Portland, Maine, King wrote his first story at the age of 7 and sold his first piece of writing to a magazine when he was 18 years old. He earned a B.A. degree from the University of Maine at Orono in 1970 and began teaching high school English.
In 1973 King’s first novel, Carrie, was published. The book tells the story of a teenager who exacts deadly revenge on her high school classmates by using her powers of telekinesis, the ability to move objects without touching them. After Carrie King became a bestselling horror writer, publishing a string of popular books. King’s The Shining (1977), about a man who slowly goes crazy, is set in a haunted, snowbound hotel. The Stand (1978) depicts an apocalyptic showdown between forces of good and evil. Christine (1983) features a sinister car that seems to come to life, and It (1986) concerns a group of childhood friends who reunite to confront an evil presence in their hometown. King’s many other novels include Misery (1987), Needful Things (1991), Insomnia (1994), Rose Madder (1995), The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (1999), Dreamcatcher (2001), and From a Buick 8 (2002).
Many of King’s works have been made into motion pictures. Some of these include Carrie (1976), The Shining (1980), Cujo (1983), The Dead Zone (1983), Misery (1990), The Shawshank Redemption (1994), Apt Pupil (1998), Hearts in Atlantis (2001), Dreamcatcher (2003), and Secret Window (2004).
King has explored unusual publishing options with some of his works. In 1996 he issued a six-part monthly serial entitled The Green Mile. By parceling the tale into monthly paperback instalments King intended to heighten the tension of the novel. The work was later made into the movie The Green Mile, released in 1999. In 2000 King became one of the first well-known authors to publish a work exclusively as an e-book, or electronic book. Without releasing the story “Riding the Bullet” on paper, King’s publisher made it available online for readers to download onto computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and specialized devices for reading e-books. A larger work, The Plant, was released in electronic instalments in 2000, but the project was halted after six chapters.
The Green Mile (1996) is a serial novel later republished with all six volumes in a trade paperback. More or less as a challenge, Stephen King published this story as a serial in six parts. Just as in Charles Dickens' time, the story was crafted while the book was already in production. In keeping with the serial concept, the first edition consists of six thin, low-priced paperbacks. Since it first appeared, The Green Mile has been republished as a single volume. The first edition contains a section where the narrator speaks directly to the reader; the later edition contains an additional foreword. The novel was left otherwise untouched, though King did change one passage where a character in a straitjacket wipes his brow (a mistake that initially slipped past both him and his editor).
The novel won the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel in 1996 and was later adapted by Frank Darabont for the screenplay of a feature film of the same name in 1999, directed by Darabont, starring Tom Hanks as Paul Edgecombe and Michael Clarke Duncan as John Coffey.
King explain's the novel's title is a very straightforward way: “The wide corridor up the centre of E Block was floored with linoleum the colour of tired old limes, and so what was called the Last Mile at other prisons was called the Green Mile at Cold Mountain”.
In the novel the author aims at exposing poignant social themes that are, though universal, are above all appealing to the American audience. Thus racism is revealed in the Green Mile through the attitude of white Americans towards the protagonist – a giant of an “African American” John Coffey - "like the drink, only not spelled the same". Another theme is the injustice of the law system in the United States that can is as clear as day when it comes to an innocent person being convicted of a crime he has never committed. But above all it is the injustice and failure of people towards one another, cruelty that is emphasized because we mostly see criminals who did horrendous things to others and Percy Wetmore, a prison guard who is unable because of his hatred feel sympathetic towards others. Also, the protagonist chooses to die because he is sick of seeing people doing bad things to one another all the time. One of the books central lines is the supernatural that is revealed through Coffey's healing capacity. Ultimately, King is playing on our deepest wishes and most sacred beliefs, such as belief in miracles for instance. The impression some readers get while reading the story is that humans have always had all the supernatural abilities inside them already, it is just we have forgotten how to use them properly, or something has been prevented us from remembering how to use them. The themes are even more visible because the novel is set in a prison. Closed space functions as catalyst, removing all the clutter of the outer world and thus allowing us to concentrate on its function which is, though punitive, stands for people hurting and killing others, be it in a civilised, or better, legalised way. This fact also suggests that the plot of the story is based mostly on the external man-against-man conflict.
As for the message of The Green Mile, as it often happens with King, there may be no messages in stories that were originally written for entertainment. However, there are many philosophical lines within this particular novel and King repeats a well-known truism that love is probably the most powerful force on Earth. It is what creates, but also, it is what destroys. Hence, the allusion to religious scripts some of which say that it is because of God who loves humans that we are born and it is also because of God that we actually die and can reunite, bodiless, with the guy after death. It could be that John Coffey who has this amazing gift from God, realises this and wants to leave this world.
The story of The Green Mile is told by one of the major characters – Paul Edgecombe. Since it is told from the narrator's point of view, we get a biased understanding of the events. The character-narrator confides to the reader his personal thoughts thus in the focus of the reader's attention is the inner world of the character-narrator. In the exposition we see Paul Edgecombe as a block supervisor at the state penitentiary was at Cold Mountain in 1932. This year marks the arrival of John Coffey, a 6'8" black man who has been convicted of raping and murdering two small white girls. During his time on the Mile, John interacts with fellow prisoners Eduard "Del" Delacroix, a Cajun arsonist and murderer, and William Wharton ("Billy the Kid" to himself, "Wild Bill" to the guards), a wild-acting and dangerous multiple murderer who is determined to make as much trouble as he can before he is executed. So John's arrival is the first complication. The reader later suspects through the eyes of the supervisor that it was not the black man who actually killed the girls. Other turning points in the novel include the episodes involving John Coffey curing Paul's urinary infection, Coffey's bringing Mr. Jingles – Del's new pet – back to life, Del's exection when another prison guard – Percy Wetmore – deliberately makes the prisoner suffer, curing Warden Hal Moore's wife's deadly cancer and passing it to Percy. Percy killing Wild Bill – punishment of the two evil-doers – seems to be the climax of the story. And John Coffey's execution and Paul Edgecombe's thoughts that the fact that he is still alive at the age of 104 in good health is due to John Coffey's transferring to him some of his power is the denouement of the novel.
The main characters in the novel are the guards Paul Edgecombe and Percy Wetmore, the prisoners John Coffey, William “Wild Bill” Wharton, Eduard Delacroix and the mouse Mr. Jingles. Paul is a complex character because the beginning of the novel sees him as an ordinary prison guard whose beliefs are later changed by the black prisoner's healing abilities and by the fact that he is convicted of a crime he never did. Naturally, as we learn at the end of the novel he is an old man in good health because of the powers transferred to him and he compares it to damnation. He also seems an honest person who stands for the good in the world. It is illustrated by his actions and the way he treats Percy.
Percy Wetmore is a complete opposite of Paul Edgecombe. He is full of hatred towards the place where he works, towards his colleagues and the inmates. He also does cowardly things and takes revenge on Delacroix by deliberately not soaking the sponge with brine when the latter is electrocuted. He is sadistic and punished for his evil when John Coffey transfers cancer to him after which he goes completely off the rockets.
The prisoner John Coffey reminds in a striking way of a Jesus Christ to the reader. He possesses supernatural powers and cures diseases and reads other people's minds. Though he seems uneducated and dumb at first sight, he sees the gist of what is happening in the world. He also has the god-like right of either rewarding people with good things or punishing the wrong. He is sympathetic and does not appear what he really is. For instance, nobody expects him to have these abilities in the first place. Secondly, although a giant of a man, he is afraid of the dark.
Another convict Wild Bill is a deranged and psychotic killer. The author lets his reader realise that it was he who kidnaps, rapes and kills the two girls (the dogs followed a different path, not where the bodies were found. This fact is altered in the film since John Coffey actually sees Wild Bill killing the children). He is also a racist and treats others like scum. Stephen King is to a degree sympathetic towards this character because he dies in his sleep.
As for the arsonist and murderer Eduard Delacroix, he is John Coffey's friend and goes through a transformation when he befriends the mouse. Curiously, at the execution sabotaged by Wetmore, his face catches fire and he dies in agony as if he suffers from arson himself.
Mr. Jingles is a mouse that enlivens Del's life and later appears in Paul's nursing home thus demonstrating that John Coffey managed to pass him a long life as well.
As for the language and the style of the book, the novel abounds in versatile lexical stylistic devices. On the lexical level we find many metaphors like the nature of my job, the next twist of the snake, giant and others, the epithets Green Mile, naked honesty, the idioms poured out my whole heart, the similes sighs that trembled like sobs, twisting in his guts like a nice sharp stick, emotionally coloured words like fuckin faggot. On the phonetic level we see examples of alliteration fuckin French-fried faggot, on the graphic level there are many graphons that represent John Coffey's uneducated Southern dialect. If we analyse the syntactic level we can find examples of ellipses since there are many dialogues, detachment gibbering cry - a kind of Rebel yell - that froze Harry..., repetition, gradation, antithesis.
As far as my opinion of the novel goes, first of all I should say that I understand how challenging it must for any writer to produce a novel. It takes a lot of imagination, creativity, patience and determination. I believe Stephen King has done an excellent job of entertaining his reader. I also like the fact that he presents us with some philosophical ideas, like the one that love kills. On the other hand the author does a poor job of satisfying his reader intellectually. The page-turner probably was never intended to do this particular function but the intellectual side is what you usually expect when you read novels in your 5th year at university. Jonathan Coe's What a Carve Up! could easily cope with this task. I really liked the language of the novel and though Stephen Kings has not become my favourite author, he is a good example of successful American literature.