The Green Mile

“‘Getting the talk started’ was at the center of our job, really. I didn’t know it then, but looking back from the vantage point of this strange old age (I think all old ages seem strange to the folk who must endure them), I understand that it was, and why I didn’t see it then—it was too big, as central to our work as our respiration was to our lives.”  

“Getting the talk started” refers to the guards’ duty to verbally engage with the inmates awaiting their death sentences. The responsibility to talk to the inmates is not a requisite part of the job, but an informal duty that ensures that inmates maintain a sense of mental stability as they await their deaths. While it is a service to the condemned men, Paul’s remark about the centrality of the work as “respiration” suggests that the guards need the talk as much as the inmates do.

“I stopped laughing all at once, suddenly feeling cold through my flesh all the way to the bones. I want to say I don’t know why I felt that way—no one likes to come out with something that’s going to make them look or sound ridiculous—but of course I do, and if I can tell the truth about the rest, I guess I can tell the truth about this. For a moment I imagined myself to be that mouse, not a guard at all but just another convicted criminal there on the Green Mile, convicted and condemned but still managing to look bravely up at a desk that must have seemed miles high to it (as the judgment seed of God will no doubt someday seem to us), and at the heavy-voiced, blue-coated giants who sat behind it.” 

When the guards spot Mr. Jingles in The Green Mile for the first time, they are delighted by his high intelligence and boldness. Paul is entertained too until he comes to a sobering realization that life’s chances had made him a guard when he could easily be mouse or inmate. Whereas God’s judgment presides over humanity, the desk overlooks Mr. Jingles. While Paul and the rest of humanity fear God, the mouse bravely looks upon the sight of the desk. Mr. Jingles’ boldness makes Paul consider briefly the circumstances of his humanity and the humanity of the other inmates.

“That made what Percy had done and what he was trying to do not right. Not even if it was a mouse he was trying to do it to. And the fact that he would never understand how come it wasn’t right was pretty much the perfect example of why he was all wrong for the job he thought he was doing.” 

1.   Percy’s relentless pursuit of Mr. Jingles startles the inmates as he shouts and moves around in a fury. While the others have accepted the mouse as part of their everyday lives, Percy is intent upon killing it for no reasons other than his sheer impulse towards violence and his dislike of Delacroix. This excerpt reveals the callousness of Percy’s personality. He shows no concern for the fact that Mr. Jingles provides some joy and relief to the other guards and inmates in The Green Mile. Rather, he wants to vanquish the small pleasures of a place where men await their deaths.

“The world turns, that’s all. You can hold on and turn with it, or stand up to protest and be spun right off.” 

In preparation for Arlen Bitterbuck’s execution, the guards rehearse using another inmate, Toot-Toot, as a stand-in for Bitterbuck. Paul acknowledges the strangeness of rehearsing an event that has such a morbid end, but shares that such rehearsals are necessary for the witnesses who will be judging the outcome of the execution. Paul’s statements about how “The world turns” suggests that such matters are routine. Whether or not the execution goes well, it is not worthwhile to protest. This adherence to routine is significant as Coffey’s appearance later in the novel challenges this philosophy.

“I don’t want you to forget him, all right? I want you to see him there, looking up at the ceiling of his cell, weeping his silent tears, or putting his arms over his face. I want you to hear him, his sighs that trembled like sobs, his occasional watery groan. These weren’t the sounds of agony and regret we sometimes heard on E Block, sharp cries with splinters of remorse in them; like his wet eyes, they were somehow removed from the pain we were used to dealing with.” 

Paul reflects on the process of writing about Coffey at Georgia Pines as an elderly man. In an emotional plea, he implores the reader to acknowledge Coffey’s life and suffering. He insists that Coffey’s pain is distinct because he cries not only for himself, but for the agony that our collective humanity experiences. He bears a weight larger than any of us can imagine. 

“‘He got commuted mostly because he was white,’ Harry wrote, ‘but he got it in the end, just the same. I just think of it as a long stay of execution that finally ran out.’” 

After Arlen Bitterbuck is executed, The President’s sentence is commuted to life in prison. Harry reasons that the inequity in this decision is due to racial bias. However, another inmate eventually murders The President in prison, leading Harry to wonder if The President had simply received his execution several years late. In prison, the life chances of white and nonwhite inmates seem to undergo similar fates, suggesting that death is a great equalizer.

“I didn’t doubt the story the others told of Wharton’s blank face and dull eyes when they told it, but that wasn’t the Wharton I saw. What I saw was the face of an animal—not an intelligent animal, but one filled with cunning…and meanness…and joy. Yes. He was doing what he had been made to do.” 

At the guards’ first encounter of Wharton for his transport to Cold Mountain, they report that the inmate appears sedated. However, Wharton comes to life upon arrival at Cold Mountain and attempts to choke Dean to death. Paul lays eyes on Wharton at this moment, seeing not the quelled inmate that others reported but a dangerous and remorseless criminal. Paul determines that Wharton’s violence seems natural to him, as if “he was doing what he had been made to do” and taking pleasure in it.

“But we have to remember that your negro will bite if he gets the chance, just like a mongrel dog will bite if he gets the chance and it crosses his mind to do so.” 

Hammersmith, the reporter for the Detterick twins’ murder case, relays to Paul the tragic story of his son’s accident as an analogy for the dangers of trusting black men. One day, Hammersmith’s dog attacks his young son out of nowhere, and to protect the boy, the reporter shoots the family pet. He compares the unexpected violence of his family dog to Coffey, stating that while Coffey may appear benign at the moment, he is capable of harming another human. Hammersmith’s remarks demonstrate the strong racial prejudice of the time and the precarity of Coffey’s fate under such views.

“This is the real circus, I thought, closing my eyes for a second. This is the real circus right here, and we’re all just a bunch of trained mice. Then I put the thought out of my mind, and we started to rehearse.” 

To comfort Delacroix, the guards lie to him about the fictional town of Mouseville, where there is a circus for talented mice like Mr. Jingles. In rehearsing for Delacroix’s execution, Paul experiences a crisis of conscience. He compares the guards’ execution routine to the circus for the way they each perform their role for an audience. To do his job, Paul has to excise these feelings of doubt and proceed ahead.

“A man with a good wife is the luckiest of God’s creatures, and one without must be among the most miserable, I think, the only true blessing of their lives that they don’t know how poorly off they are.” 

Throughout Paul’s ordeal with the events leading up to Coffey’s death in 1932, Janice plays the role of a supportive wife. Before he can articulate his troubles openly, Janice intuitively knows what he needs and supports him from a close distance. When Paul gradually reveals more of his struggles, she becomes a confidante and validates his decisions. In the above statement, Paul shares his gratitude for his wife and expresses his sympathies for any man who does not experience the love of a supportive woman like Janice. 

“But the death of Eduard Delacroix had been the ugliest, foulest thing I had ever seen in my life—not just my working life but my whole, entire life—and I had been party to it. We had all been a party to it, because we had allowed Percy Wetmore to stay even after we knew he was horribly unfit to work in a place like E Block. We had played the game.” 

In revenge for humiliating him, Percy sabotages Delacroix’s execution so that the inmate experiences an excruciating and prolonged death. Paul acknowledges his and the other guards’ complicity in Delacroix’s painful execution as they’ve known of Percy’s patterns of abuse for a while now. Percy tends to extend a grudge to the point of extreme violence. Paul blames himself for not getting rid of Percy before Delacroix’s execution out of fear of losing his job. He has “played the game” by putting his job above the life of another man.

“I believe that the combination of pencil and memory creates a kind of practical magic, and magic is dangerous.” 

As an elderly man at Georgia Pines, Paul commits his story of Coffey’s death to writing. He suggests that his written memories have a similar effect to Coffey’s power, which is a type of magic. Coffey’s power eventually proves dangerous as he uses it to enact vengeance upon Wharton and Percy.

“They heard what he was saying in a way that would agree with what they were seeing, and what they were seeing was black.”

As Paul relay his findings about Coffey’s innocence to Brutal, Dean, and Harry, he goes over the scene of Coffey’s apprehension, where Deputy Sheriff McGee mistakes the man’s words as a confession. Paul explains that rather than considering other possible meanings behind Coffey’s statements, “I couldn’t help it” and “I tried to take it back but it was too late,” McGee believed the worst because Coffey was a black man.  

“There are still pieces of them in there… I hear them screaming.”

When the guards break Coffey out of Cold Mountain to heal Melinda, Coffey pauses at the sight of Old Sparky to make the above remark. Due to Coffey’s empathetic abilities, he can register the voices of all those who have died in the electrocution chair. Coffey’s recognition of the lives lost startles Paul, someone who has performed his job for many years but has not considered Old Sparky in this way. Coffey’s remark haunts Paul long after they leave Cold Mountain.

“Now, however, it was Coffey’s turn to walk the Green Mile, and who among us could stop it? Who among us would stop it?”

In the above statement, Paul contemplates the difference between “could” and “would” wherein the former suggests that there are practical obstacles in the way of saving Coffey from execution and the latter implies will. Whereas Paul and others have pointed out the legal and social challenges in proving Coffey’s freedom, the latter question asks something graver, namely of who among them would risk their lives and careers to protect a black man. The difference between the two questions is a matter of personal agency, one that the guards turn away from as the risk is too much to bear for any one of them.

“‘I know everything there is to know,’ I said through my tears. ‘I know too dam much, if you want to know the truth. I’m supposed to electrocute John Coffey in less than a week’s time, but it was William Wharton who killed the Detterick girls. It was Wild Bill.’” 

When Paul returns home from his informal investigation into Coffey’s innocence, he makes love to Janice before breaking down and sobbing the above admission. In an ironic twist, the true killer of the Detterick girls had been in the cell right next to the falsely-accused Coffey all this time. However, with Wharton dead, Paul knows that the chances of winning Coffey’s freedom have significantly lessened. He is devastated at this realization after having formed a meaningful connection with Coffey.

“‘Do you mean to kill the man who saved Melinda Moores’s life, who tried to save those little girls’ lives? Well, at least there will be one less black man in the world, won’t there? You can console yourselves with that. One less nigger.” 

After Paul reveals the truth of Coffey’s innocence to Brutal, Dean, Harry, and Janice, everyone but Janice agrees that there is nothing they can do to help him. Outraged at the men’s complacency, Janice puts them to task for giving up so easily. She accuses them of not trying as hard because the life at stake is a black man’s life.

“‘What am I going to say if I end up standing in front of God the Father Almighty and He asks me to explain why I did it? That it was my job? My job?’” 

As the guards prepare for Coffey’s execution, Brutal expresses his apprehensions about killing a man whose gift of healing seems to come from God. He considers what it might mean when he faces God at the end of his life and has to answer for his actions. The excuse that he is just doing his job is no longer sufficient. Brutal’s moral quandary reflects what the other guards are thinking, too, as they reconsider what it means to follow protocol against their greater moral judgment.

“‘I’m rightly tired of the pain I hear and feel, boss. I’m tired of bein on the road, lonely as a robin in the rain. Not never havin no buddy to go on with or tell me where we’s comin from or goin to or why. I’m tired of people bein ugly to each other. It feels like pieces of glass in my head. I’m tired of all the times I’ve wanted to help and couldn’t. I’m tired of bein in the dark. Mostly it’s the pain. There’s too much. If I could end it, I would. But I can’t.”

Before Coffey’s execution, he takes Paul’s hand and offers one of the longest statements he has ever uttered. Due to his gift, he experiences the world’s pain as a highly-attuned empath. This burden has worn him down over the years. Through his touch, he gives Paul the gift of added vitality, but also passes on some of the associated burden. As Paul proceeds through his life, he carries both with him. 

“Baby Jesus, meek and mild, pray for me, an orphan child. Be my strength, be my friend, be with me to the very end.” 

The prayer that Coffey says before his execution is a slightly-altered version of a Christian hymn. Whereas the original hymn addresses Baby Jesus in second person, Coffey’s version of the hymn identifies himself as the “orphan child,” or Christ himself. This altered hymn affirms Coffey’s role as a Christ-like figure in the novel.

“Old Sparky seems such a thing of perversity when I look back on those days, such a deadly bit of folly. Fragile as blown glass we are, even under the best of conditions. To kill each other with gas and electricity and in cold blood? The folly. The horror.” 

Over time, death by electrocution seems like an outdated mode of punishment. Paul looks back at his participation in this method of death as a foolish error. As humans already are “fragile as blown glass,” the method of electrocution feels excessive and horrific in hindsight.

“Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not. Time takes it all, time bears it away, and in the end there is only darkness. Sometimes we find others in that darkness, and sometimes we lose them there again.”

The novel troubles the separation of life and death by claiming that time eventually leads to death. Paul’s rumination of time considers the inevitability of all things. His statement refers on one hand to Coffey’s fear of the dark and the notion of death as eternal darkness. It also refers to the idea of being found, first referenced by Melinda when she finds Coffey in her dream. Paul adds that being found can mean losing someone once again in the inevitable cycle of love and loss. 

“John saved me, too, and years later, standing in the pouring Alabama rain and looking for a man who wasn’t there in the shadows of an underpass, standing amid the spilled luggage and the ruined dead, I learned a terrible thing: sometimes there is absolutely no difference at all between salvation and damnation.” 

In a tragic accident that took the lives of nearly every passenger, including Janice, Paul survives thanks to the gift of life that Coffey imparted to him years ago. Although he survives, he wonders whether living is a gift he has to move forward without the love of his life. Survival feels damned as he continues to watch everyone he loves pass away. When life can be taken and granted so randomly, he wonders if there is any difference between salvation and damnation.