The Green Mile

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1996

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Part 6, Chapters 10-13Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 6: Coffey on the Mile

Chapter 10 Summary

At Coffey’s execution, Klaus and Marjorie Detterick are in the audience. Marjorie swears at Coffey as he passes, wanting vengeance for her dead girls. Coffey is frightened by the audience’s hatred. Brutal tells Coffey to think of the guards who know him, but it does not seem to reassure him. Harry begins to cry. The guards attempt to set up the execution as tenderly as possible while Marjorie yells from her seat. Coffey appears frightened. When Brutal is about to put a mask over Coffey’s face, he cries out that he is afraid of the dark. Paul tells Brutal to put the mask away as a way of fulfilling Coffey’s last request. When the electrocution begins, the current is so strong that several lights blow out. As Coffey is being electrocuted, he catches Paul’s eye briefly. Shortly after, Coffey’s body goes limp and he is declared dead.

Chapter 11 Summary

By the time Paul returns home from the execution, it is dawn. Paul remembers how Coffey was afraid of the dark and begins to cry again. Janice sits with him and consoles him.

Chapter 12 Summary

At Georgia Pines, Elaine finishes reading the pages that Paul has given her. His writing moves her to tears. From his story, she gathers that he must be much older than he looks. He reveals that he is 104 years old and that his long life is part of the residual effect of Coffey’s touch. He offers Elaine the remaining pages of his story to read. When she finishes those pages, they meet up so that Paul can show her what he has been keeping in the shed. It turns out that Mr. Jingles is alive and living in the shed. Paul has been bringing peppermint candies and toast to the mouse since he discovered it on Georgia Pines’ kitchen steps. He was not sure it was Mr. Jingles until he found a spool and saw that he could do the same tricks. Paul reasons that Mr. Jingles was granted the gift of long life, much in the same way that Paul received it from Coffey. Paul believes that Coffey’s touch extends life but that the burden of empathizing with the world’s pains wears on the body and shortens one’s life. Paul tells Elaine that he thinks Mr. Jingles’ arrival is a sign that he has to share his story about Coffey before he dies.

Brad interrupts them for another round of abuse. Paul mistakes, Brad for Percy given his aggressive behavior, and tells him to stay away from Mr. Jingles. At the corner of the shed, Mr. Jingles expires after playing with the spool, much to Paul and Elaine’s grief and horror. Brad taunts them about the mouse, but Elaine tells him off. Angrily stomping off, Brad informs them that the shed will be closed to them, moving forward. When he is gone, Paul asks Elaine to help him bury Mr. Jingles.

Chapter 13 Summary

In 1956, Paul and Janice are in a Greyhound in Alabama on their way to their granddaughter, Tessa’s graduation. It’s raining. Janice, on the seat beside Paul, is complaining about her camera. Suddenly, one of the Greyhound tires blows out and the vehicle slams into a truck hauling fertilizer. A diesel tank explodes upon collision. Paul finds himself alive and unhurt. He locates Janice, who is bleeding from her head. In the shadows, he sees Coffey and calls out to him to help, but as soon as he does, the figure disappears.

Paul cries out in devastation, wanting to know why Moores’ wife was saved but not his own. Janice dies bleeding to death in Paul’s arms. He realizes that Coffey had saved his life, passing off some of his vitality to him.

As a result, Paul moves through life in near perfect health, so much so that he begins to miss the feeling of pain. Eventually, Elaine, the only person at Georgia Pines who knows about Coffey, dies. He lies awake at night in his old age, thinking of his friends who have passed away and the life left in him that he has to live.

Chapters 10-13 Analysis

In these final chapters, Paul narrates Coffey’s execution and the ways in which his death continues to haunt him as an elderly man at Georgia Pines. At 104 years old, he reveals to Elaine that he is able to live a long life due to the vitality that Coffey imbued in him before his passing. However, he knows his death is near when Mr. Jingles arrives at Georgia Pines. He regards it as a sign that Coffey’s story must be told before his impending death. Paul also emphasizes that as a residual effect of Coffey’s touch, all those who benefitted from his gift must bear something in return. For Mr. Jingles, it was a permanent limp; for Paul, the length of his life is haunted by the weight of Coffey’s presence and the knowledge of mankind’s cruelty. Paul explains to Elaine that while Coffey’s touch grants him added life, the prolonged exposure to human unkindness wears on his vitality.

While one can infer that Brad’s abuse is one hindrance to Paul’s vitality, Paul reveals in the last chapter that Janice’s death has played a large role as well. In the final chapter, Paul expresses that he believes Coffey’s touch saved him from the crash that took his wife’s life. His added vitality made it possible so that he only bore a small fraction of the injuries while others around him suffered worse injuries, or died. At the site of Janice’s death, Paul realizes that vitality does not ensure happiness. Paul’s longer life means that he must endure watching the people he loves die, while he lives on.

The final line of the last chapter, “The Green Mile is so long” (535), extends the lessons of The Green Mile to Paul’s life outside of Cold Mountain. The corridor is a metaphor for the diverging paths of life and death. Yet the circumstances of the novel show that life eventually leads to death. In the last scene of the novel, Paul awaits his own death, professing that the path is long, given what more he has to endure before his eventual end.