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The Green Mile Plot

The Green Mile is a story told in flashback by an elderly Paul Edgecomb (Dabbs Greer, later by Tom Hanks in the younger version of the character) in a nursing home who is talking to his lady friend Elaine about the summer of 1935 when he was a corrections officer in charge of Death Row inmates in Louisiana's Cold Mountain Penitentiary. His domain was called the "Green Mile" because the condemned prisoners walking to their execution are said to be walking "the last mile"; here it is on a stretch of green linoleum to the electric chair. One day, a new inmate arrives, John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan), a 7-foot-tall black male convicted of raping and killing two young white girls. Upon being escorted to his cell, he immediately demonstrates "gentle giant" character traits: keeping to himself, fearing darkness, and being moved to tears on occasion. Soon enough, Coffey reveals extraordinary healing powers by healing Edgecomb's urinary tract infection and resurrecting a mouse. Later, he would heal the terminally ill wife of Warden Hal Moores (James Cromwell), who suffered from a large brain tumor. When Coffey is asked to explain his power, he merely says that he "took it back." At the same time, Percy Wetmore (Doug Hutchison), a sadistic and unpopular guard, starts work. He "know[s] people, big people" (he is the nephew of the governor's wife), in effect preventing Edgecomb or anybody else from doing anything significant to curb his behavior. Wetmore recognizes that the other officers greatly dislike him and uses that to demand managing the next execution. After that, he promises, he will have himself transferred to an administrative post at Briar Ridge Mental Hospital and Edgecomb will never hear from him again. An agreement is made, but Wetmore then deliberately sabotages the execution. Instead of wetting the sponge used to conduct electricity, he leaves..More The Green Mile is a story told in flashback by an elderly Paul Edgecomb (Dabbs Greer, later by Tom Hanks in the younger version of the character) in a nursing home who is talking to his lady friend Elaine about the summer of 1935 when he was a corrections officer in charge of Death Row inmates in Louisiana's Cold Mountain Penitentiary. His domain was called the "Green Mile" because the condemned prisoners walking to their execution are said to be walking "the last mile"; here it is on a stretch of green linoleum to the electric chair. One day, a new inmate arrives, John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan), a 7-foot-tall black male convicted of raping and killing two young white girls. Upon being escorted to his cell, he immediately demonstrates "gentle giant" character traits: keeping to himself, fearing darkness, and being moved to tears on occasion. Soon enough, Coffey reveals extraordinary healing powers by healing Edgecomb's urinary tract infection and resurrecting a mouse. Later, he would heal the terminally ill wife of Warden Hal Moores (James Cromwell), who suffered from a large brain tumor. When Coffey is asked to explain his power, he merely says that he "took it back." At the same time, Percy Wetmore (Doug Hutchison), a sadistic and unpopular guard, starts work. He "know[s] people, big people" (he is the nephew of the governor's wife), in effect preventing Edgecomb or anybody else from doing anything significant to curb his behavior. Wetmore recognizes that the other officers greatly dislike him and uses that to demand managing the next execution. After that, he promises, he will have himself transferred to an administrative post at Briar Ridge Mental Hospital and Edgecomb will never hear from him again. An agreement is made, but Wetmore then deliberately sabotages the execution. Instead of wetting the sponge used to conduct electricity, he leaves it dry, causing excruciating pain to Eduard "Del" Delacroix (Michael Jeter) and eventually causing him to burst into flames. Shortly before Delacroix's execution, a violent prisoner named William "Billy the Kid" Wharton (Sam Rockwell) arrives, due to be executed for multiple murders committed during a robbery. At one point he seizes Coffey's arm and Coffey psychically senses that Wharton is the true killer of the two girls, the crime for which Coffey was falsely convicted and sentenced to death. Coffey "takes back" the sickness in Moores's wife and regurgitates it into Wetmore, who then shoots Wharton to death and falls into a permanent catatonic state. In the wake of these events, Edgecomb interrogates Coffey, who says he "punished them bad men" and then takes Edgecomb's hand and imparts the vision that he saw of what really happened to the girls. Edgecomb asks Coffey what he should do, if he should open the door and let Coffey walk away. Coffey tells him no, he is ready to go because here there is too much pain in the world, which he can feel, and that he is "tired, dog tired" and ready to rest. When Coffey is put in the electric chair, he asks Edgecomb not to put the traditional black mask on his face because he is afraid of the dark. Edgecomb agrees and after Paul shakes his hand, Coffey is executed. As the flashback ends, Edgecomb notes that he requested a transfer to a youth detention center, where he spent the remainder of his career. In the present, Edgecomb's friend questions his statement that he had a fully-grown son in 1935. He explains that he was 44 years old at the time of Coffey's execution and that he is now 108 and still in excellent health. This is apparently a side effect of the life-giving power of Coffey's touch: a significantly lengthened lifespan. Mr. Jingles, Del's mouse resurrected by Coffey, is also still alive but Edgecomb believes his outliving all of his relatives and friends to be a punishment from God for having Coffey executed. Edgecomb explains he has deep thoughts about how "we each owe a death; there are no exceptions; but, Oh God, sometimes the Green Mile seems so long." Less