The Green Mile Analytical Paragraph (AHL Week 1)

This morning I began reading The Green Mile by Stephen King. I read Carrie a few years ago, and I really enjoyed it, so I figured that I would try another Stephen King novel. The Green Mile tells the story of Paul Edgecomb, a death row supervisor at a Louisiana prison in 1932. While Paul includes experiences from many different inmates that are on death row, of the sixty pages that I have read so far, the book is primarily about an inmate named John Coffey. Coffey, a six-foot, eight-inch, two hundred fifty pound man raped and murdered two young girls.

There are many components of the story that are creepy, such as very detailed descriptions of the young girls' bleeding corpses. One of the things that I found even creepier, however, is how blasé Paul is to the events happening around him. While Paul is discussing the events of the crime, he begins to comment on families from the same town.  He mentions that he "knew their families; most of them had sent Sparky a meal from time to time" (King 35). Sparky is one of the nicknames that Paul and his colleagues have for the electric chair at their prison. Without displaying any emotions, Paul mentions that he has witnessed the death of a kid from almost every family in town. By using personification to describe the death row inmates as a "meal" for Sparky, King is likening the executions to feeding a hungry animal. The combination of referring to the electric chair as "Sparky" and referring to the inmates as "meals" makes the situation sound more like a dog being fed than a person being killed. This creates quite a disturbing mood because it completely takes the humanity out of the people, portraying them as mere objects, destined for consumption.