Both "The Godfather" and the prison epic "The Green Mile" depict characters at the center of moral dilemmas. To underline the significance of the ethical dramas of these characters, both films effectively make historical and literary parallels, as well as deploy the techniques of metaphors and visual and verbal symbolism, to give the characters and the plot lines a significance that transcends the purely 'entertainment' quality of the film.

             For instance, the character of the Godfather played by Marlon Brando is immediately characterized as a man of power and immoral influence through the use of the literary or historical allusion of the singer at his daughter's wedding-an obvious stand-in for the real-life Frank Sinatra, one of the most famous crooners of all time. But the exhibition of the Godfather Don Corleone is not limited to merely his association with the singer, but is even more effectively deployed by his symbolic decapitation of the horse's head from afar of the man who refuses at first to employ the singer in his film-a kind of castration of the movie man's power and influence with violence of the creature the man most adores. However, later, the Don will die, playing with his grandson in an orchard, humorously pretending to be a monster with an orange in his mouth-a metaphor for the man's whole existence-he dies pretending to be what he was in life, even while engaging in hopeful actions with the next generation.

             The son of the Don is also first characterized by a potent literary analogy-that of the prodigal son, who returns from the army to the bosom of his family. Later, the once estranged Michael Corleone will become married once again to his family, first in the metaphorical form of his Sicilian wife, who is killed, and finally, symbolically becoming part of the family as he takes the Don's place and assumes the Don's characteristic chair, clothing, and rhetorical flair of making offers that cannot be refused.