The Science of Stephen King

The electric chair is the means of execution in The Green Mile and its history is disturbing. The method originated in the United States and was used almost exclusively here as recently as 2013. Some states including Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia still have the electric chair as an option for capital punishment. Invented in 1881, the electric chair was seen as a better, more humane alternative to hanging. The way the electric chair works involves several steps. First, the condemned is strapped into a wooden chair. Second, their head and legs are shaved and electrodes are attached. Finally, an electric current is sent to the body and repeated until the person dies.

The first public execution using the device did not prove successful. William Kemmler was convicted of murdering his girlfriend with a hatchet and was put to death on August 6, 1890. The first seventeen-second current of electricity caused Kemmler to become unconscious but did not kill him. A second shock caused blood vessels to rupture and bleed while the electrodes attached to him singed. The total execution took eight minutes and onlookers could hardly watch. One witness, Deputy Coroner Jenkins, said, “I would rather see ten hangings than one such execution as this. In fact, I never care to witness such a scene again. It was fearful. No humane man could witness it without the keenest agony.”4

Electric chairs use about two thousand volts of current to kill the condemned.

The use of the electric chair declined over the decades as a more humane solution was sought. Lethal injection became the preferred method for execution and is still used in numerous countries. The idea was pitched in 1977 by a medical examiner named Jay Chapman. He believed three drugs should be injected in order to first cause the condemned to become unconscious, then paralyzed, then cause the heart to stop beating. This became the cocktail for lethal injections but was never medically tested or peer reviewed. Not every state uses this three-drug method but one thing is clear: opponents claim this is no less cruel or painful than previous methods of execution.

John Coffey dies by electrocution at the end of The Green Mile but assures Paul that his time has come. As Paul says in the novel, “we each owe a death, there are no exceptions.”5 Although he doesn’t know when death will come for him, he feels at peace knowing he put down in words the story of what happened all those years ago at the Cold Mountain Penitentiary. May we all feel this sense of tranquility when our time comes.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

Getting lost in the woods would be terrifying for anyone but imagine having it happen to you as a nine-year-old child. This is the premise of Stephen King’s novel from 1999, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. King compared the novel to “an unplanned pregnancy” and said the idea came to him during a Red Sox game. “Stories want only one thing: to be born. If that’s inconvenient, too bad.”1 Trisha MacFarland is on a hike with her family on the Appalachian Trail and gets separated from them. She’s left with only a backpack containing a Gameboy, a Walkman, a hard-boiled egg, a tuna sandwich, two Twinkies, a liter of Surge, and a poncho. She fights real menaces such as hunger, dehydration, and pneumonia but also feels like she is being stalked by the God of the Lost; a wasp-faced, evil entity. The pitcher, Tom Gordon, seems to appear to her and help guide her throughout the story.

In order to understand how to handle being lost in the woods, we spoke with Survivorman (2004–2015) star Les Stroud and got his advice in case we are ever in this situation.

Kelly:“In Stephen King’s book The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Trish is lost in the woods and ends up eating some flowers that she finds. What plants and flowers are edible and safe to eat in various parts of the country?”

Les Stroud: “There are thousands of edible wild plants across the globe and no ecosystem is void of many things you can eat. What changes is, are they in season, are you around the areas where they grow, do you know which parts are edible, do they have any poisonous look-alikes? There are hundreds of books available pointing to the plethora of plants that are edible as well.”

There are dozens of edible flowers in nature but it’s always safer to check a guide before tasting.