A Biblical Archetypal Reading Of Stephen King’s The Green Mile

As one of the great American modern popular novelists,Stephen King has published many best-selling novels.His novels are rich in content and numerous in character,expressing the extensive concern of the society.Among his many works,The Green Mile is another prison novel after the famous prison novella named Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption.This novel has risen up to the top of the New York Times bestseller list since it was published.And it utilizes and absorbs a great deal of biblical elements in order to show us an unknown world behind walls with a unique perspective.So the thesis attempts to use Northrop Frye’s archetypal criticism to analyze the biblical archetypes in The Green Mile,which includes its themes,characters and imageries.The thesis is made up of five parts.The first part introduces Stephen King’s life and his literary achievements,a brief introduction of The Green Mile and its literature review in both China and abroad.It also gives a brief introduction to Northrop Frye’s archetypal criticism.The second part is the main part of the thesis,which includes three chapters.Chapter One makes a detailed analysis of the novel in terms of archetypal themes,three aspects will be discussed in detail: the sacrificial scapegoat theme,redemption theme and rebirth theme.The author’s interrogation of humanity is reflected by using these biblical themes.Chapter Two analyzes the archetypal characters in the novel which can be divided into three categories: Jesus character,Satan characters and Disciple character.The author subtly applies these biblical archetypal characters to this novel,which not only enriches the significance of the prototype,but also promotes the characters in the novel and made it full of profound social significance.Chapter Three focuses on the study of archetypal imageries including the apocalyptic imagery,the demonic imagery and analogical imagery.Through the analysis of apocalyptic image--- "green mile",demonic images including the Cold Mountain Penitentiary and "Old Sparky",as well as analogical image the mouse "Mr.Jingles",it is easy to understand King’s original intention of this novel,and the employment of these archetypal images expresses the author’s concern about contemporary American society and the human nature.Thus the theme of this novel gets deepened through those symbolic imageries.The last part is the conclusion of the thesis.This novel takes prison as the background,Stephen King gives a vivid description of human nature with good and evil in the dark field,making the contrast between the darkness of the prison and the brightness of humanity.The application of these biblical elements not only makes this novel vivid in characterization and enriches the meaning of the archetype,but also deepens the social and cultural connotation.It at the same time expresses Stephen King’s humanistic concern.