Arlen had true happiness and let it go?
-
Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — The Green Mile
Citation_Needed — 9 years ago(January 08, 2017 01:41 AM)
Usually people who commits crimes are those who are bitter from having nothing and live a life of despair. If he had a young wife and enjoyed his time with her, how the hell did he screw it all up so bad? Seems completely unrealistic. Someone like that would focus all their pain inward and lash out at themselves, not others.
-
strntz — 9 years ago(January 11, 2017 07:09 AM)
Older folk look back at certain times years ago and only begin to realize that those times were happy times later, particularly within the context of what's going on in the present.
Arlen had a young wife and was in love and really didn't appreciate it then, not completely. We can't just speculate that he left the mountain that summer and ruined his life immediately. I haven't read the book but I'd guess that Arlen and his wife drifted apart over the years and his crimes occurred much later in his life.
Some of my fondest memories are those of when I was a child, but does any child stop and think how great those times were at that age?
Is very bad to steal Jobu's rum. Is very bad. -
chas437 — 9 years ago(January 14, 2017 08:09 AM)
You're forgetting a key component of the story. This took place during the Great Depression. In rural parts of the South, unemployment was well above 50%, people were going hungry, and some were even starving.
This caused many men to do things they wouldn't normally do just to feed their families, like commit robberies, and even armed robberies. I have the feeling this is what happened to Del, a robbery gone bad.
Getting back to Arlen, he was a Native American. They are known to have serious problems with alcohol. If you add dire poverty to drinking problems, its not hard to imagine how a good man could go down the wrong road.
Wild Bill was really the only truly bad man on the 'Mile'.