The Green Mile

Author: Stephen King

Rating: 2/5

Paul Edgecombe recounts a mysterious event that happened at the Cold Mountain Penitentiary in 1932.

Spoilers ahead.

Detailed Summary

Paul Edgecombe is writing this story in a nursing home. In 1932, he worked as a block supervisor at the Cold Mountain Penitentiary death row. It was called “The Green Mile” because of the floor’s weird colour. A criminal named John Coffey arrives. He’s huge and black and scared of the dark. He’s been accused of raping and murdering two girls. There are other prisoners. A nineteen-year-old named William Wharton who calls himself “Billy the Kid” and who takes a special unliking towards Percy Wetmore (this annoying guard) and Delacroix (Del) who is French and has a pet mouse named Mr. Jingles. Paul has a urinary infection but John somehow gets rid of it. Percy hates Del. He refuses to move to another job until he gets to see an execution so he’s given control over Del’s. Before Del’s execution, he steps on Mr. Jingles. John takes Mr. Jingles and gives him life. He purposefully doesn’t wet the sponge so Del is burnt alive and has a painful death. In the present day, Paul keeps getting antagonised by Brad Dolan. Elain Connelly stands up for him in the nursing home–she suffers from arthritis.

Anyway, Paul realises that John has healing abilities. The warden’s wife, Melinda, has a brain tumour. Paul and some others break John out of prison to heal Melinda. John does so but doesn’t manage to get rid of the sickness from himself. When they return to the prison, John passes the illness to Percy who shoots Wharton. Paul realises that his suspicions of John being innocent were right. John had been trying to save the girls. Wharton had raped and killed them. Paul feels bad that they’re going to kill John but John reassures him. He also says Paul won’t explode. John is executed. Paul lets Elaine read the story he’s been writing. Then he shows her Mr. Jingles. The mouse dies (Brad Dolan also does some annoying stuff). Turns out, if you were healed by John, you lived for an unusually long time. Elaine dies a while after. Paul reveals that his wife, Janice, had died in a bus accident. He had been the only sole survivor of the explosion and had seen John’s ghost. Paul is now more than a century old and contemplates when death will come for him.

Plot and Pacing: Oh my god. Is this what a Stephen King book is like? A behemoth of boringness? One of my Reddit friends recommended this book to me–it’s her all-time favourite–and I don’t understand why. The bit about John Coffey’s power was interesting and I was devastated that he had to be electrocuted. Although, to be honest, the amount of pain he must have gone through every time must have been excruciating. And he did say that he wanted to die.

Anyway, I was almost glad when Mr. Jingles died (and then he was brought back to life) because the whole damn book seemed to be about the bloody mouse. No, wait, the first hundred pages were about Paul’s urinary infection. All I could think of was how E. coli causes UTIs and prostatitis could have been another possible cause. I was getting really bored with descriptions of how peeing hurt. I just wanted the story to move along. Of course, once I reached halfway, I understood why King had spent forever on those bits but, wow, I skimmed a few pages because I was so bored.

I was tempted to DNF the book but I’ve never read a novel by King before and it just felt wrong to give up especially because this is considered to be one of his best books. I will say that the book makes you think a lot more about electrocution and the way criminals are treated. King really humanised them and you start to empathise with a few. It also makes you think about how many people are actually innocent and how many must have hidden talents which they can’t share with the world because of one bad act they committed.

Characters: Paul was alright. I liked how supportive Janice was but I didn’t like how she never questioned Paul about anything. I would have been really nosy. I didn’t remember half the guards’ names. Percy Wetmore was a pain in the backside. Wharton genuinely terrified me because of how casual he was about his crimes. John Coffey was interesting. Elaine Connelly was alright. I’m not sure how I feel about her relationship with Paul but I guess you can find love anytime, anywhere.

Writing Style: I had really high expectations which was not good. Everyone talks about how Stephen King is absolutely amazing and how his books are downright scary. I thought The Green Mile would scare me into nightmares if I read before I slept. It never happened. Which sucked. I like being scared.

Everyone on the writing subreddits quotes King’s advice and those tend to be the most upvoted posts. But this book was just so dry. It could have easily been condensed into two hundred pages. And I know that it was serialised–there are like three notes on how this book was written which hyped me up even more (not good either)–but you would think someone would have pointed out how the writing kind of sucks. Well, okay, that’s a bit unfair. There were some chapters where the writing was genuinely good. As in, I felt completely sucked into the story. But those bits only made up 10% of the story.

But anyway, lesson learnt: never go into anything with high expectations unless you want to be disappointed.