Darabont's Disputable Concepts In The Film The Green Mile

The Green Mile
“On the day of my judgment, when I stand before God, and He asks me why did I kill one of his true miracles, what am I gonna say? That is was my job? My job (King)?” The film, The Green Mile, produced by Frank Darabont and written by Stephen King illustrates several disputable concepts. The film starts out in the deep south of Louisiana in a nursing home. The story is told in a flashback as Paul Edgecomb, the main character, refers back to his past occupation as a prison guard at Cold Mountain Penitentiary in the year 1932. The story revolves around a character named John Coffey who is destined to death but has supernatural healing powers. The story exemplifies three different areas of importance segregation, corruption, and

The poor treatment of blacks occurred for years to follow. “The courts continued to enforce Jim Crow laws until the mid-1900s, and African Americans were also subjected to extralegal treatment in the form of physical assaults and practices such as lynching, where police were often present (Johnson).”In the film the word nigger even appears a few times throughout. The characters that blurted out this hateful word did it with ease. Today on the other hand, it is not a very common thing for people to say to one another. Lastly, another point is the fact that John was just roaming around when he found the two girls. This implied that John was jobless, which was not uncommon for African Americans during this time. Actually African Americans were only given a privilege such as that right before the time period in which the film is

Such as I previously mentioned John Coffey was no ordinary man he was given the ability to give people life and remove the death from inside them. John illustrated this numerous times throughout the film. The first example of John’s miraculous powers began with Paul’s bladder infection. John grabbed a hold of Paul’s groin and removed the infection from Paul’s body. The next example from the film would be the reviving of Mr. Jangles the mouse. Del is another inmate on death row and after he made a close connection with this curious mouse Percy the cold hearted guard ends the mouse’s life. John immediately tends to the mouse saving his life. From the things John has the ability to do there is no way he is not a miracle from god. Paul learns of the good John can do and uses that to save the life of the prison wardens wife. However, Paul is left with a extremely hard decision at the end of the film regarding whether or not he must proceed with Johns execution. John after seeing what he has seen and feeling the pain of all the people he has saved he had enough. John told Paul that he wanted to be executed. Paul replied with a very good point “On the day of my judgment, when I stand before God, and He asks me why I killed one of his true miracles, what am I going to say? That is was my job? My job (King)?” This shows Paul’s struggle in making the decision of whether to try and prove John’s innocence or to go