Green Mile Sparknotes

The Green Mile, March 1999 Stephen King, 1947-? Summary: John Coffey is brought to Cold Mountain accused of rape and murder. It becomes known that he has a healing touch. Paul Edgecombe, the superintendent, has sympathy for Coffey and later finds out that Coffey is indeed innocent, but can find no way to stop the execution. Coffey proclaimed that he “wanted to go” and thus allowed Paul to accept Coffey’s fate as he must, and go on with his life. Central Characters: Paul Edgecombe, probably over 100, narrator, was the head of E block (death row) at Cold Mountain Penitentiary. Paul faces an internal struggle between what his job wants him to do and what he sometimes knows is the “right” thing. Kind and gentle, he recounts this episode of his life from Georgia Pines, his retirement home. John Coffey is a huge, muscular black man but is very slow in the mental sense, brought into a situation where death surrounds him, yet he has the power to heal by his own touch. Other Characters: Dean Stanton, Harry Terwilliger, Brutus Howell, and Percy Wetmore were all guards on E block. Percy was the most significant; he was a banty-rooster sort of guy. He liked to pick fights. He represented the fears of Paul Edgecombe. Though it is not obvious at the
Jingles, Delacroix’s mouse, was symbolic of everything good on the Green Mile. He was symbolic of the only joy that E block held. The mouse brought compassion to all the guards except for Percy Wetmore, who tried to kill the “rodent”. The Green Mile symbolized our journey through life, and the electric chair symbolized its end. The “bugs” that came out of Coffey’s mouth following the healings were symbolic of the sickness leaving. He inhaled the sickness or ailment of each person (and the mouse) that he healed into himself. The bugs leaving his mouth signified that the sickness was cured, and that he had indeed