The Science of Stephen King

One of the unexpected characters in the book is a mouse named Mr. Jingles. He is trained and also has magic in him after being healed by John. Is it possible to train mice? It is, but it takes patience and about two weeks of consistent practice. Mice, just like other animals, prefer to be rewarded with food for good behavior. By luring a mouse with food and getting them comfortable with you, they will be more likely to follow directions. Use a similar tone of voice when offering a command and only move on to the next trick after one is mastered. All sorts of animals can be trained to accomplish varying degrees of tricks or duties. Companion animals, show performers, and police dogs all undergo training that they learn through routine. Not all animals can be trained, though. Based on their personality or temperament, it may be easier to forego the tricks and let them be themselves!

John Coffey can be seen as a healer in The Green Mile. He fixes Paul’s bladder infection, brings Mr. Jingles back to life, and even removes a brain tumor from a woman. What is the history behind folk healers? People over the centuries have been seen as having otherworldly powers and the ability to heal. Some women who aided in midwifery or used herbal remedies were accused of witchcraft. Others simply used the knowledge passed down to them through generations to provide health care that may not have been available otherwise. There are those who claim to be healers but are proven to be frauds. For example, psychic surgery began to gain popularity in the mid-1900s. Surgeons would supposedly be able to penetrate a person’s body without surgical tools and remove any lesions or foreign objects that were making the patient sick. Investigations have found that these pseudo surgeons were actually using fake blood and animal parts with a sleight of hand to make money off desperate people.

Two psychic surgeons provided testimony in a Federal Trade Commission trial that the organic matter supposedly removed from the patients usually consists of animal tissue and clotted blood.3

The focus of the novel is the long walk to death. In The Green Mile, death row means you will die by the electric chair which they nicknamed “old sparky.” Capital punishment has existed for centuries and the methods for execution have ranged from quick and painless to downright barbaric. In South and Southeast Asia, it was popular to torture and execute people by crushing them with elephants. Elephants are highly intelligent and could be trained in various methods of either prolonging torture or by killing someone swiftly. This practice was used particularly in India and continued until the later part of the nineteenth century.

A practice known as the blood-eagle killing-ritual was recorded in Norse literature and was a horrific method of publicly killing someone. The method involved carving into the back of the person, removing their ribs, and taking out their lungs through the back to appear as wings. Some historians argue that the ritual is fictional and meant to induce horror in its readers. Others hypothesize that warriors left face down after battle could have fallen victim to ravenous birds and appeared to be sacrificed. Crucifixion was a method of public execution that dates back to 300 to 400 BCE. Those being crucified were often nailed or tied to the upright cross structure. Depending on the crime, the method of attaching the criminals to the cross varied and could kill them within a day or leave them to suffer for several days. Ling chi was a method of execution that is often called “the death of a thousand cuts.” This was practiced in China from 900 CE until its abolishment in 1905 and was most often reserved for those who committed the most heinous crimes.

The guillotine claimed its first official victim in 1792.

The last execution by hanging to take place was on January 25, 1996, in Delaware

The guillotine was invented in 1789 in France as a more humane method of execution. The man who invented it, Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, was actually opposed to capital punishment but argued that this invention would be quicker and less likely to fail than the crude axe beheadings of the time. Public beheadings were a popular spectator event and continued in France until 1939. Drawing and quartering was another gruesome public execution. Those who were sentenced to death were pulled behind a horse to be hanged, then their bodies would be pulled apart in separate directions by four horses. Firing squads began to be used as an execution method for military personnel and involved the accused standing blindfolded to be fired upon by fellow soldiers.