Critical Lense the Green Mile
Life Is Not Paradise Life can often appear to be full of despair. In the constant struggle between good and evil, evil seems to get the upper hand. This is also the case in the novel, The Green Mile, by Stephen King. The story and experiences of the main character, Paul Edgecombe, the supervisor at a prison block in the 1930's, are the epitomy of the following quote. "Life is not paradise. It is pain, hardship, failure, and temptation shot through with radiant gleams of light, friendship, and love." This expresses the ideas that the majority of life consists of darkness and hardship, but has strong glimpses of light, love, and happiness. This agrees completely with the ideas expressed by Stephen King in The Green Mile. Throughout the novel, these same ideas of an imperfect world can be identified through the repetition and symbolism that makes the message so clear and strong. The message that despite the overwhelming sadness, despair, and darkness in the world, we are blessed with the powerful moments of love, light, and good. The story, told from the perspective of the main character, Paul Edgecombe, gives the same message portrayed by the quote. Paul,being the supervisor of a block in Cold Mountain Penitentiary where inmates awate the electric chair, has seen alot of evil. Time after time, the block where Paul works recieves someone or something more evil than man, and time after time Paul partakes in the execution, where he sees the man die, but that evil lives on. Paul had served for over seventy executions, and finally good, rather than evil, comes through the door and into the E block. His name is John Coffey and he has a gift. John Coffey was wrongly accused of the murder of two children and sentenced to death. John has the ability to see and feel the fact that the world was full of evil better than anyone else. Constantly crying over the darkness of mankind, John Coffey, however, was the light. He has the ability to take the evil or darkness out of