User blog:ACT4583/Pathetic Pinhead Proposal: Percy Wetmore

First Pathetic Pinhead proposal. And I've got a particularly magnificent candidate for today.

The Work
The Green Mile is a 1996 novel written by Stephen King, with a 1999 film adaptation. It follows our protagonist named Paul Edgecombe, a 104-year old man. He reflects on and documents his life as a death row prison guard at the Cold Mountain Penitentiary. He gets along with most of his colleagues, but there is one guard in particular that Edgecomb and company have a mutual disdain towards.

The Candidate and Their Actions
Percy Wetmore is the nephew of Louisiana's governor, and a prison guard at the Cold Mountain Penitentiary, being one of Paul Edgecombe's colleagues. He is the only guard that Edgecombe and the other guards share a mutual disdain towards, as he is shown to be haughty, obnoxious, and extremely sadistic. Percy is shown to take delight in tormenting death row inmates. In particular, Percy enjoys victimizing Eduard "Del" Delacroix; he breaks his fingers, causes him to slip and fall on purpose, and stomps on Del's mouse Mr. Jingles (though Mr. Jingles is eventually revived by John Coffey). However, Percy is also shown to be a dirty coward; when a new inmate named William Wharton is brought, Wharton elbows Percy in the face, proceeds to assault the other guards, and nearly garrotes Dean. This petrifies Percy so much that he is unable to bring himself to stop Wharton. Percy is also later groped by Wharton, which causes Percy to cry and wet himself.

Eventually, Percy lands a job at the Brier Ridge Mental Hospital, but before departing, he states that he wants to spearhead an execution. This execution just so happens to be Del’s, and Percy is responsible for soaking a sponge which will help improve conductivity to Del’s brain and enable an easy and relatively painless death. However, Percy purposely foregoes wetting the sponge, which results in Del dying by being fried alive from the poor electrical conductivity. This shocks the guards, the witnesses, and even Percy himself (though Percy shows no regret and was most likely scared since he was taken by surprise). The guards, realizing that Percy cannot be trusted, bind and lock Percy up in a padded room.

Later, when Percy is freed, John Coffey grabs Percy from his cell. Coffey, who has the ability to transfer diseases and psychological thoughts to others, disgorges the cancer he healed from the wife of the prison warden to Percy. This results in Percy becoming psychologically broken, and Percy subsequently shoots and kills Wharton before succumbing to catatonia. After Percy is deemed unfit for duty, he is transferred to the same mental hospital where he planned to work at. He was confirmed to have passed away in the novel, but in the film, his supposed death does not occur onscreen.

Immorality
Oh definitely. Wetmore is only working as a prison guard to sadistically watch death row inmates die; his actions and behaviour makes this very apparent. For example, after Arlen Bitterbuck is executed, Wetmore sarcastically says to his corpse, "Adios, Chief! Drop us a card from Hell, let us know if it's hot enough..." However, Wetmore's worst evildoings by far are when he victimizes his numero uno victim Del.

Now there are two moments that could be used to argue that Wetmore has moral standards, but they are highly debatable:


 * 1) In the film adaptation, after Percy sabotages Del's execution, it becomes so horrific that it even terrifies him. It could be argued that Percy being scared means that he has some standards. However, Percy ultimately felt no remorse for his actions, and therefore it is more likely that Percy was horrified not out of any sympathy for Del. Rather, Percy was fearing for his own safety and was frightened out of how he would feel if he was in the electric chair. Thus, this combined with his lack of regret later on means that Percy's cowardice is much more likely out of selfishness and surprise rather than genuine sympathy.
 * 2) When John Coffey regurgitates the warden's wife's disease into Percy out of punishment for his actions, Percy goes up to William Wharton's cell and shoots him to death. It is possible that Percy was repulsed by Wharton's crimes, which would mean that Percy would have some standards. However, it is also possible that John was controlling Percy to shoot Wharton. Neither of these possibilities are confirmed, and it is left up for interpretation. However, I think the second option is more plausible, as it would make more sense for Coffey's emotions to be instilled in Wetmore as the former is controlling him, rather than Wetmore feeling genuinely disgusted despite being presented as irredeemably evil for the majority of the story.

I believe that these moments are ambiguous enough to let them slide. Otherwise, Wetmore is more than sordid enough to qualify.

Cowardice
Wetmore the one-man army being a coward? No no no, that must be false...

All jokes aside, yes, Wetmore easily fulfils this section of the PP criteria. For example, both of his interactions with Wild Bill involve him cowering in fear. Firstly, when Dean Stanton is being garroted by Wild Bill, Wetmore does nothing but stand by in fear, and Brutal has to get involved to neutralize the threat. Secondly, after Wetmore causes Del to slip and fall, he gets molested by Wild Bill, causing him to scream in fear and wet his pants. Also, as stated earlier, after sabotaging his execution he gets frightened by Del's death, very likely because he was scared of the thought of such a gruesome death happening to him. Finally, when Paul and the other guards confront Percy to punish him for Del's death by locking him up in the padded room, Percy begs for them to let him go.

Stupidity
I'd go as far to say Wetmore is stupid. For a start, he is extremely narrow-minded and petty; he breaks Del's fingers after Del smirked at him, and he purposely botches his execution because the latter had laughed at him for wetting his pants. As well, he fails to consider what would happen if he foregoes wetting the sponge during Del's execution. This causes him to be caught by surprised and scared by Del's harrowing death. Finally, he makes no attempt to hide the fact that he had sabotaged Del's execution. After his fellow guards confront him, he makes a lousy attempt to weasel his way out of his predicament by blatantly lying that he did not know the sponge had to be wet.

Lack of Charisma
Wetmore lacks any genuine charisma. He is able to put on a faux affable nature (like when he acts friendly towards Del before causing him to slip and fall), but said nature is rather superficial, and Wetmore doesn't use this faux affability to manipulate others (not like he would have been able to even if his life depended on it).

Incompetence
To call Wetmore completely inept is a bit of a stretch. However, the only reason why he is only successful in tormenting death row inmates because he has power as a prison guard, and when his power is taken away (refer to the above instances) he is unable to pose even a marginal threat. Hence, he lacks any genuine competence or skills and is unable to stand up for himself.

Hateability
Wetmore is one of the most sympathetic and likeable villains in the entire universe.

Wetmore fits Hate Sink to a T. This loathing can be attributed to both his personality and his actions. Wetmore is exceptionally pompous, and he prances about the penitentiary as if he owns the place. He acts very condescendingly towards his colleagues, and this behaviour frequently exasperates them to no end. Not to mention, the only reason why he even became a prison guard in the first place was so he could derive pleasure from seeing death row inmates suffer and die; he shows no genuine interest in fulfilling his duties, and prefers to read comic strips containing...suggestive material. His actions (which have been covered earlier) only serve to make him even more despicable. The amount of disgust generated from in-universe characters and audiences alike towards Wetmore is completely warranted.

Final Verdict
A hearty yes to this truly delightful chap.