It is 1932 in the Deep South. Not a good place to be if you are a black man. A strange black man, John Coffey, is sentenced to the electric chair for the grisly rape and murder of twin white girls. John Coffey will not stick up for himself and meekly accepts his sentence. But the more the prison guards get to know him, the more they are convinced he is innocent. What bothers them even more is that John Coffey seems to have miraculous healing powers.
The Green Mile (Signet; 1996) is arguably the best fiction that Stephen King has written. It contains some of King’s best imagery, characters and social commentary on both racism and capital punishment. Like many King novels, it has been adapted to the big screen, but unlike most King-based movies, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture of 1999. (It lost to “American Beauty”.) Even if you’ve seen the movie, there are still surprises for you in reading the book.
Beyond Horror
Although sold under “horror”, this is not an obviously scary story. There are no vampires, ghosts or the usual unusual creatures that bump around a King novel. But, the scary are somehow more chilling because they describe events that could really happen. The odds of you bumping into a werewolf are pretty slim — but the odds of you being arrested and convicted for a crime you didn’t commit are really high.
The real monsters in “The Green Mile” are the people — not mutants and not cyborgs but normal people. They range from a sadistic prison guard to a sadistic nursing home attendant. This is a world where some of the most sympathetic characters are confessed murderers and those on the good side of the law can be chilling.
Stephen King has often claimed that anything truly horrifying is something barely indistinguishable from real life. It’s the slight twists on normal life that bring up the hairs on the back of the neck. It’s like looking at the face of a beautiful woman — only to get closer and discover that she has no eyes.
Let’s Get Quibbling
One of the main questions running through the story is who raped and killed the girls if John Coffey didn’t? The answer is not completely satisfying and is one of the few plot holes in the story. In some ways, it seemed very odd that no one realized who the killer was. King habitually doesn’t answer every question his novels bring up, but that was a big one that did need to be answered fully.
Another thing that gets a little irksome is an ongoing joke about how to spell John Coffey’s name. The joke is quite long and gets repetative.
There is also a lecture by one minor character about the evil nature of the Negro. He equates this with that of a mongrel dog. This speech was offensive to black people or to anyone that has a mongrel dog. Perhaps this was to make the character less likeable, but the message was mixed at best.
But these are minor criticisms to an otherwise spellbinding story.
Fun Facts
“The Green Mile” had an unusual beginning (which is common for King novels). It was originally released in a serial novel format, emulating the works of Charles Dickens, which also were relased in a serial format. The six parts were released every month in 1996 and finally all together in 2000.
Although King has insisted that he did not realize John Coffey’s initials were JC (the same as Jesus Christ’s), there are many who believe that King is lying and that the parallels between John Coffey and Jesus Christ were intentional.
