The Green Mile And Wild Bill: Comparative Essay

Every action that we perform in our day to lives is influenced by some pinch of motivation. It’s the process of encouraging yourself to accomplish your goals and wanting to achieve the expected result. We are surrounded by motivation whether it’s the people around us, the books we read, the tv shows we watch, the players we look up to etc but we can’t identify all of them. In the movie “The Green Mile,” directed by Frank Darabont, demonstrates how the lives of working prison guards drastically changes after they meet John Coffey and his sense of compassion. The driving force of motivation for the main characters.

In the film, John Coffey is wongly accused of murdering and raping 2 innocent girls. He possesses unique powers which causes him to look inside a person through touch and take away any complication from them and transfer it to himself and turns it into dust or flies. Nonetheless, he’s a simple man who’s scared of the dark despite his humongous height. His sense of compassion is so strong that he even felt Delcroix’s pain in the electric chair despite him being very faraway. Paul Edgecomb one of the main characters and prison guard, suffered from urinary tract infection and Coffey helped him get rid of his infection, as a thankyou Edgecomb brings Coffey some cornbread and he decided to share some with Delcroix’s further illustrating his compassion for others. This shows how compassion, the driving force of motivation helps Coffey to be trusted by the prison guards due to his act of kindness and helping nature.

On the other hand we have Percy Wetmore and “Wild Bill” Wharton. These both are perfect examples of pure evil. They get off by hearing and watching other people suffer and they laugh about it like it’s nothing. Percy Wetmore whose a sadistic guard gave one inmate particularly the hardest time Eduard Delcroix. Wetmore purposely stepped on Mr.Jingles, Delcroix’s pet mouse and to top it all off his hatred for Delcroix motivated him to purposely sabotage his execution by putting a dry sponge on him rather than a wet sponge causing him to suffer a long and agonizing death on the electric chair. He himself knows he’s a bad person by saying “Meanness is like an addicting drug—no one on earth is more qualified to say that than me—and I thought that, after a certain amount of experimentation.” He liked what he did to the mouse and loved hearing Delcroix scream in pain and agony. “Wild Bill” Wharton who is actually guilty of murdering the 2 girls is completly insane who likes to pull pranks for laughs and giggles. From chewing the mooncake and spitting on a guards face to peeing on a guards shoe, he clearly doesn’t care about anyone. They both lack a sense of compassion which caused them their fate in the movie. There’s a clear line between the main characters whose motivations are pure good or evil.

All in all, compassion is the driving motivation that caused the gaurds to trust Coffey and become friends with the prisoners except Wharton. It also earned John Coffey his respect in the Mile. Some might think that there would be no compassion at a place like death row, but kind people like John Coffey and Paul Edgecomb it doesn’t seem so. If there were people like Percy Wetmore who think’s they are superior than others then maybe it would be different. This movie shows that even in a dark/wicked place sympathy finds a way to shine through.