The Green Mile

Somehow I’ve watched The Green Mile film half a dozen times but never actually sat down to read the book. But that has all changed, and as it turns out I really have missed out on a spectacular story and at least some affirmation that the film adaptation is extremely faithful to the book.

I’ve read a handful of Stephen King novels, and whilst I certainly wouldn’t go so far as to call myself an aficionado, I would say that each one has been excellent. They’re all very different stories but the thing that unifies them for me is the exceptionally strong character voice throughout. The Green Mile is no different. It’s framed as Paul Edgecomb’s memoir of sorts, which he’s writing in a retirement home. He speaks of his time as a guard on death row, of the good and evil that goes on there, and of the magic of John Coffey, like the drink but not spelled the same.

The way I’d describe the writing is it’s as if you’ve put on a good shirt, bought a pack of shortbread, driven over to the retirement home and an elderly Paul Edgecombe was sitting across from you in a faded green armchair, drinking a cup of tea and telling you the story of his life. It was so reminiscent of my own grandfather’s stories around the dinner table. It had similar cadence, similar divergences, and rememberances. All of the charm of a man remembering something from his early years. Some things he remembers, and some things he doesn’t and it is perhaps that variation that gives Paul’s voice the most credibility.

He leads us through his memories of executions, some successful, some less successful, and then his discovery of John Coffey’s abilities and ultimately his own personal investigation into the murders that put Coffey onto death row in the first place. As a crime novel, it’s nothing hugely unique, but the magic of Coffey and his inner turmoil forced me to keep turning pages. The end is nearly as emotionally challenging as Flowers for Algernon. Stephen King has a bit of a bad reputation for endings, but this one felt entirely on point for me.

There’s excellent parallels drawn between death row and the nursing home through the characters of Percy Wetmore and Brad Dolan respectively. Sadists will be sadists, it appears. I feel that this is a common theme in King’s books. He demonstrates that even well-respected well-to-do people are capable of doing evil things. There’s also some interesting exploraton of death row itself, of innocent people condemned to die. It is unfortunate that such things are not confined to the works of fiction.

Knowing that Stephen King is famous as a discovery writer, I have to wonder about which parts of this book is from the initial discovery and which came later in the inevitable revision phase. The story and themes are consistent throughout, but I suppose that’s no surprise in a finished novel.

What I would give to get my hands on the first draft. To see what the raw brain-dump of the first manuscript looked like¹.