The Green Mile

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James Barry Mr. ------- English 8, Period 9 18 October 2010 The Green Mile by Stephen King “ ‘This is a nightmare,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a man who may be innocent-who probably is innocent-and he’s going to walk the Green Mile just as sure as God made tall trees and little fishes. What are we supposed to do about it? If we start in with that healing-fingers shit, everyone is going to laugh their asses off, and he’ll end up in the Fry-O-Lator just the same’” (353-354). In our legal system sometimes mistakes are made, and people who are innocent are sent to prison. The guards at Cold Mountain Penitentiary have identified an innocent man, and there is almost nothing they can do about it. This innocent man is on death row, and is set to take a seat in the electric chair for his execution. In the novel The Green Mile by Stephen King, Paul Edgecombe is a prison guard and also the central protagonist. He learns that he is executing an innocent man named John Coffey. Coffey is sentenced to The Cold Mountain penitentiary in 1932 for raping and murdering two young white girls. He is sentenced to death row which was nicknamed “The Green Mile” for the color of its floor. John Coffey is condemned to die by the electric chair nicknamed “Old Sparky.” Paul later learns from John’s thoughts and actions that John is a very sensitive man and who possesses miraculous healing abilities. Paul’s life will never be the same. Paul Edgecombe tells the story as a first-person narrative. The time frame switches back and forth between the past and the present. In the present, Paul is an old man in a nursing home reflecting back to his past when he was a Block Supervisor at Cold Mountain Penitentiary, 1932. The central conflict is an external conflict between John and the outside world. John is an innocently and wrongly convicted man. John also has a miraculous gift of being able to

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