The Green Mile

In physical descriptions of The Green Mile, the green linoleum corridor leads to two possible paths for an inmate—a left turn means that an inmate’s sentence was commuted to life in prison, while a right turn meant death by electrocution. The divergent paths symbolize judgment over life and death by an intervening power. While the power that presides over The Green Mile in the beginning of the novel is the state, the greater force of divine power takes over the judgment of life and death as the novel progresses. The setting becomes a metaphor for the burdens one endures in life, in preparation for death. This is best emblematized by the novel’s final words, “… oh God, the Green Mile is so long” (535). At his bed in Georgia Pines, Paul awaits his eventual death much in the same way the inmates in The Green Mile of Cold Mountain await their own respective executions. While Paul has spent his working life sending men to their deaths, he now awaits his own end in his old age. He may have retired from The Green Mile, but its symbolic weight has not left him.