Special Issue #2

and violent ways. Reading Annie through this lens may not excuse her violent behavior,
but it does help to explain it. As a butch woman myself, I understand the anger that
results from being ridiculed for the way you dress, move, talk, and take up space in the
world. This scrutiny creates palpable resentment that builds up over time. While most of
us find more productive ways to release the resulting anger (through writing online
essays analyzing the problem, perhaps?), we sympathize with the rage that Annie Wilkes
displays. No, butch women are not all insane murderers, but we do have some insight
into the inciting factors that have contributed to the creation of this dangerous
character. To us, Annie is not an unmitigated monster. She is the frightening, extreme
result of a lifetime of hurt and rejection. Annie was not born evil. It is society that has
turned her into a raging butch.

Notes:
[i] “Borderline personality Disorder.”
[ii] King, 191.
[iii] Halberstam, xx.
[iv] Chemaly, 30.
[v] Rabin.
[vi] Benshoff, 128.

Works Cited:
Benshoff, Harry M. “The Monster and the Homosexual.” The Dread of Difference: Gender

and the Horror Film, edited by Barry Keith Grant, University of Texas Press, 2nd
edition, 2015, pp. 116-141.
“Borderline Personality Disorder.” Mayo Clinic.
Chemaly, Soraya. Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger. Atria Books, 2018.
Halberstam, Jack. Female Masculinity. Twentieth Anniversary Edition with a New Preface.
Duke University Press, 2018.

50

King, Stephen. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. Twentieth Anniversary Edition.
Scribner, 2020.

Magistrale, Tony. Stephen King: The Second Decade: Danse Macabre to The Dark Half.
Twayne Publishers, 1992.

Misery. Directed by Rob Reiner, Columbia Pictures, 1990.
Munt, Sally R. Butch/Femme: Inside Lesbian Gender. Cassell, 1998.
Rabin, Nathan. “In Misery Kathy Bates Made a Nobody into a Monster.” The Dissolve, 18

Dec. 2014.

51

REVOLUTION AT THE WILKES
FARM: DEVIANCY AND POWER

STRUGGLES IN MISERY

AD Fredline

Ever since the nation’s founding, the monster’s form in American horror cinema has
chronicled American history, reflecting both our greatest fears and our greatest
inhibitions, as suggested in W. Scott Poole’s Monsters in America (2014). While the
purpose of monsters in horror cinema is most clearly to thrill and terrify, these creatures
also often symbolize the underdog, representing the traits and identities of those who
have been outcast by society. As Poole writes, “the marginalized are the monstrous and
the monstrous is marginalized. The monster, more than our fears, also represents our
hatreds. … The monster is the sickening Other.”[1] As a result of this connection to those
deemed abnormal and undesirable, the monster is consequently endowed with extreme
liberatory potential, harboring the capability to combat societal expectations in order to
establish a new code of conduct.[2] This phenomenon of marginalization leading to
revolution is better understood through the applications of deviance theory.

According to the interactionist perspective, deviance can be defined as “the infraction of
some agreed-upon rule” with focus placed on who makes the rules and who breaks the
rules.[3] In his foundational text, Outsiders (1963), Howard Becker expands this
perspective to include an additional feature of the phenomenon of deviance: it is
created by society.[4] As the concept of deviancy is socially constructed, the same can
be said of the deviant label. This argument constitutes labeling theory. According to
labeling theory, a person or group of people in possession of power is given the liberty
of setting rules and boundaries for an entire community’s inhabitants. Those who step
outside of these expectations come to be known as deviants due to their opposition to
the group’s declared rules. In order to control the population and preserve the sanctity
of the set rules, the deviant must be either policed into conformity or punished for their

52

crimes. Under this definition, there is no true understanding of deviant. The deviant only
represents what those in power find undesirable. Given that this is the case, the
definition of deviant within a society could fully reverse itself if there were a shift in
power, resulting in a revolution–a new group morality with a new idea of deviance. In
this comparison, the monster represents the deviant. While he may be oppressed for his
violation of societal standards and for inciting fear within the general populace, he has
the power to change the status quo by overcoming those who labeled him deviant in
the first place. Only one question remains: if deviance is entirely subjective, how do we
know who the deviant is? Who is the monster? As in many cases, in Rob Reiner’s 1990
film, Misery, the answer is not that clear cut.

In the film, Annie Wilkes finds her favorite author, Paul Sheldon, stranded in a blizzard
after suffering a near-fatal car crash. She then takes him into her home to care for him.
However, after reading his latest works, Annie feels the need to correct him and help
him find his true “clean” path by any means necessary, despite his disagreement with
her positions. As this is the case, throughout the entire run time, the two struggle
constantly for power over one another. Each acting on their beliefs about what is right
and wrong, the two characters offer a dramatic contrast that further strengthens the
polarity of their beliefs with every interaction. Each views the other as the antagonist:
Paul sees a mentally insane woman, while Annie sees a man who has lost sight of his
calling in life and needs to be reminded how to use his God-given talent. This mimics
dozens of moral battles that have raged throughout history: religion vs. atheism,
conservativism vs. liberalism, right vs. wrong. This polarity is further developed by the
isolation of the two into a singular home for the majority of the film, creating a sort of
simulation of a community through which it becomes possible to examine society’s true
inner workings. As such, the struggle for power between Annie and Paul serves as a
microcosm of the broader social conflict between deviant and non-deviant identities,
showcasing the deviant label’s core interchangeability and instability.

53

Annie and Paul have vastly different sets of morals and values. Annie represents a more
conservative society, disapproving of the use of profanity, drugs, and anything typically
viewed as taboo. Paul, on the other hand, represents a more modern view of reality.
While he does not explicitly say that he supports things like drugs and profanity, he at
least acknowledges their existence by including them in his new novel. Due to this
polarity of beliefs, the two are bound to have disagreements. However, despite their
differences, the two must somehow work together in order to form a group morality
through which to govern over the Wilkes Farm, where the two reside for the duration of
the film. This struggle results in the formation of a community complete with a
constructed system of power.

While the Wilkes Farm may not assume the appearance of a traditional community, it
can be considered such since its inhabitants share “a common sphere of experience
which makes them feel that they belong to a special ‘kind’ and live in a special
‘place.’”[5] In regards to a physical space, the two are in close quarters at Annie’s home
for the entirety of the film. Annie may travel into town a few times, but she never
changes her place of residence, meaning that her permanent position and influence
stays at the farmhouse. Paul has no choice but to stay due to his injuries acquired in the

54

car crash from which Annie saved him, so he is a permanent resident too. As a result of
this near-total isolation of the two, Annie and Paul also end up sharing mental space as
well. They communicate and interact almost solely with each other, experiencing little to
no contact with the outside world. As such, the two must acclimate to the culture of this
new community, or one must gain enough power to shape it into the culture he or she
prefers. This creates a power struggle that holds strong for the duration of the film,
propelling the narrative forward.

Within a community, a power structure essentially serves as the skeleton. It is the base
on which all interactions, behaviors, and attitudes within the community are built. Since
the power structure serves such an integral role in the functioning of a community, it
makes sense that all inhabitants would want to reside in the top position of power so
that they can form the community in whichever way they choose. As Miller suggests,
those in positions of power have “the greatest influence in determining a culture’s
overall outlook—its philosophy, morality, social theory, and even its science. The
dominant group, thus, legitimizes the unequal relationship and incorporates it into
society’s guiding concepts.”[6] In the case of the Wilkes Farm, Annie is the one that
claims the position of power. This is due to a multitude of factors. First, the only other
inhabitant of the community, Paul, is bedridden due to severe injuries stemming from

his car crash.
Physically, Annie
can overpower
him. Her leverage
over Paul is
strengthened by
the fact that
Annie serves as
Paul’s caregiver.
These roles as

55

the physically stronger and the caretaker grant Annie the power to both give and take
pain away from Paul. She also has the power to withhold food and even shelter as the
owner and provider at Wilkes Farm. Second, the community itself is contained within
Annie’s home. As such, it could be argued that the group morality and values had been
decided before Paul even arrived. Annie then holds the power to decide what is and
what is not considered deviant within the community.

As Annie sets the values, it makes sense that her morals dictate what is and is not
acceptable on the farm. Profanity, along with anything she claims to be “dirty,” is
therefore not tolerated within their community. This also includes rude and ungrateful
behavior, along with writing about anything she deems unacceptable. The individual
defying any of these rules is labeled as a deviant. Essentially, the deviant label can be
understood as “a consequence of the application by others of rules and sanctions to an
‘offender.’ The deviant is one to whom the label has successfully been applied; deviant
behavior is behavior that people so label.”[7] In this understanding, deviancy is entirely
socially constructed within every community almost independently from other
conceptions. In the case of the Wilkes Farm, Paul is identified as deviant because he
does not subscribe to the behavioral expectations of Annie and, by extension, the
community. This is evidenced by Annie’s reference to him as a “dirty birdie” and other
accusations. When Paul is officially labeled as a deviant, he must then be treated as
such. In order to uphold the values of a community, those who deviate from the
expectation must be controlled in one way or another.

In order to neutralize a deviant, the community must first cycle through a process of
identification. Acts of deviance are labeled as unacceptable and in need of correction
through a form of confrontation: individuals who have violated a norm are met by
policing agents whose purpose it is to identify the deviant and punish them for violating
the values of the community, thereby preventing the misconduct from threatening the
communal values.[8] In the case of Misery, Paul is the deviant who is policed by Annie in

56

three separate fashions, including debilitation, censorship, and punishment. While Paul
is technically debilitated prior to Annie’s bringing him into her home, she intentionally
worsens his condition in a few different ways. First, she locks him in a room. While this
does not physically handicap him, it does confine him in a way that severely limits his
freedom of movement. In regards to limiting his physical strength, she also gives him
pain medication via pills and injections that put him to sleep, taking away any possibility
he has of revolting by keeping him incapacitated. Finally, she resorts to hobbling, which
further handicaps him and limits his range of movement for the rest of his life. This
serves as an effective form of policing in that the deviant, Paul, is unable to do further
harm to the group morality. Paul’s influence on the group morality is also nullified
through Annie’s censorship. After reading his new novel, she points out to him that it is
not of acceptable quality and forces him to burn the sole copy of the manuscript. In
destroying his one copy, she takes away any power it could have had on the group’s
values. Annie enforces this censorship by pouring lighter fluid on his body as a threat of
burning him alive if he does not comply, strong-arming him into acquiescing to her will.
Annie’s efforts then go even further by forcing Paul to write another book that follows
the community’s norms. This not only completely neutralizes the possible impact of the
deviant but also serves to force him into compliance. And the final method Annie uses
to police Paul is
punishment. This takes
on many forms, such as
physical attacks
whenever the nurse
feels the author is
ungrateful, verbal
attacks whenever she is
enraged by his actions,
and even psychological
attacks such as when he

57

is forced to burn his manuscript. While these three policing methods differ in approach,
they all work toward the same goal: force the deviant into a position where he can do
no harm.

In response to these policing efforts, instead of conforming, Paul answers with
resistance. In response to his debilitation, he works on building up his physical strength
and secretly stockpiles his medication so he can attempt to poison Annie. In response to
censorship, he burns the newly written “clean” novel, the Misery novel Annie demanded,
as an act of protest. Finally, in response to punishment, he strategically works to
overcome the odds against him in order to establish a fighting chance against Annie.
This work comes to a head at the end of the film when the two fight after the book is
burned. Despite his disadvantages, Paul ends up defeating Annie by engaging in
physical combat, eventually hitting her over the head with a metal pig. As a result, Paul
gains the position of power. While he may not stay at the physical space of the Wilkes
Farm for long, he carries its impact with him long after leaving, as evidenced by the
appearance of Annie at the end of the film. Despite her continued influence, Paul holds
the power to tell the tale of what happened within the community by being the only
one to remain alive. As such, he gets to decide who the deviant is in the public eye. He
completely reverses the definition of deviancy by attaining the role once used to confine
him to a position of submission.

By counterpointing two individuals with diametrically opposed moralities and codes of
conduct, the film disrupts simple assumptions about deviancy, complicating answers as
to whether Paul or Annie is the deviant. From the perspective of the audience, it is easy
to identify Annie as the antagonist framed in Paul’s point of view: an obsessive super-
fan who is so fixed in her beliefs that she deprives the injured author of outside
knowledge and influence as well as of any chance of recovery. However, from her own
perspective, Annie is merely trying to help a man understand his calling as an author. In
portraying how reality and conceptions of normalcy change based on perspective, it

58

becomes apparent that there is no concrete definition of right and wrong and, by
extension, no solid definition of deviant, either. There is only interpretation backed by
power that makes it so.

Notes:
[1] Poole, 13.
[2] Dumas, 33.
[3] Becker, 40.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Erikson, 18.
[6] Miller, 94.
[7] Becker, 41.
[8] Erikson, 19-21.

Works Cited:
Becker, Howard. “Relativism: Labeling Theory.” Constructions of Deviance: Social Power,

Context, and Interaction, 8th ed., edited by Patricia Adler and Peter Adler,
Cengage Learning, 2014, pp. 40-44.
Dumas, Chris. “Horror and Psychoanalysis: An Introductory Primer.” A Companion to the
Horror Film, edited by Harry M. Benshoff, Wiley Blackwell, 2017, pp. 21-37.
Erikson, Kai. “On the Sociology of Deviance.” Constructions of Deviance: Social Power,
Context, and Interaction, 8th ed., edited by Patricia Adler and Peter Adler,
Cengage Learning, 2015, pp. 17-24.
Miller, Jean Baker. “Domination and Subordination.” Race, Class, and Gender in the
United States: An Integrated Study, 10th ed., edited by Paula Rothenberg and
Soniya Munshi, Worth Publishers, 2016, pp.91-96.
Poole, W S. Monsters in America: Our Historical Obsession with the Hideous and the
Haunting. Baylor University Press, 2011.

59

BEDPANS AND BROKEN ANKLES:
NURSING PRACTICES IN MISERY

Laura R. Kremmel

Bestselling author Paul Sheldon (James Caan) is indeed fortunate to have been rescued
from a near-fatal car accident off a remote Colorado road in the middle of a blizzard. He
is even more fortunate that his rescuer is a nurse with years of experience and a home
well equipped to care for a patient sustaining major injuries that require long-term care.
Scholarly discussions of Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates) in Rob Reiner’s Misery (1990, based
on the 1987 novel by Stephen King) often fixate on two of her qualities. Her
demonstration of aggressive reading practices in part represents the obsessive fans who
dogged Stephen King himself, and her subversion of traditional gender expectations
psychoanalytically castrates Paul as her hostage, unmanned writer. Much less is written

about her role as a nurse. Yet,
this is the first impression the
viewer encounters. In the
opening scene, Annie performs
the services of EMT and nurse,
prying open the door of Paul’s
car, giving him mouth-to-mouth,
and carrying him over her
shoulder into the storm.

Before we as viewers see her
face, we see an IV therapy bag
hanging from its pole, which
comes into focus as she
cheerfully proclaims, “There’s
nothing to worry about. You’re

60

gonna be just fine. I’ll take good care of you. I’m your number one fan.” She stands over
his bed authoritatively, introducing herself and answering his questions calmly and
kindly before assuring him, “I’m also a nurse” and giving him pain pills. The next scenes
show her changing his IV, providing more medication—Novril—helping him to drink,
and cooling his face with a wet cloth. These opening scenes portray her as competent,
selfless, and trustworthy. Later scenes show her carefully feeding or shaving him. In one
particularly moving scene, she tells him the story of her husband leaving her, then
accepts a jug of urine from Paul without a hint of embarrassment, disgust, or
resentment. Her words are sympathetic and full of hope: you must be in pain, but you’ll
be better in no time. Taking care of you is no problem.

Annie views her own identity as twofold, both articulated in that opening scene: Paul’s
number one fan and a nurse. The film channels her multiple personalities through these
two identities—and Annie is clearly damaged as both. Her caring side surfaces when she
nurses Paul back to a semblance of health and attends to the violence that the other
personality, the fan, inflicts on him. The moment Paul realizes the amount of danger he’s
in is when Annie the fan learns that her beloved character Misery dies at the end of his
latest book and attacks him in the night. Annie the nurse, meanwhile, assures him he’ll
be able to walk again, is proud of “the work [she] did on those legs,” and inspires
confidence by
rattling off his status
using medical
terminology: “a
compound fracture
of the tibia,” and “the
fibula” is fractured as
well. It is, therefore,
tempting to see her
fan personality as
the villain. In this

61

article, however, I suggest that Annie the nurse is every bit as dangerous and villainous
as Annie the number one fan. I argue that the metatexts beyond the Misery novels—
most importantly, Annie’s album—are useful as records of her profession: medical
narratives that Annie uses to guide and document care that kills.

Annie uses texts in two ways throughout the film: to monitor Paul’s health and to record
a history of her patients. The impact of reading on the body has long been documented,
and so Annie is also protecting her own health from the disease she perceives in her
patient’s novels. Horror and the Gothic in particular have been accused of being “not
good for people” since the eighteenth century, an indicator of both a writer and reader’s
state of mental and physical wellness or decay. Stephen King’s own number one fans
may have proved this theory, finding behavior such as stalking, breaking and entering,
and mailing unsettling objects to his home acceptable in their obsessive state.[i] At the
same time, authors who publish insalubrious works are deemed sick themselves,
perhaps needing to be put out of their misery. Bret Easton Ellis, for example, received
thirteen death threats after publishing American Psycho.[ii] Paul Sheldon receives only
one, from Annie, but he receives it over and over again.

Nurses in popular culture fall into three categories: saintly, sexy, or satanic with just a
touch of insanity. Suzanne Gordon suggests that this is because of a general lack of
understanding of the everyday tasks performed by nurses, some of which do include
kindness towards a patient, but no more than a physician or any other medical staff
member should show. Rarely is the extensive medical knowledge and skill of nursing
ever portrayed, a negligence fraught with gender politics and assumptions that damage
the field to this day. “In a variety of polls, nurses consistently get high marks for their
ethical and honest behavior and trustworthiness. The widely held view that nurses are
honest and ethical but that their field is not dynamic, challenging, or intellectually
demanding is the result of a complex set of factors that include media presentations of
nursing.”[iii] But, we know that Annie is skilled at what she does, that she both physically
and intellectually rises to the occasion of caring for Paul in her makeshift hospital and

62

out of her own pocket, unafraid to make difficult decisions about his care without
consultation or support. She is far from the first aggressive and capable—and, therefore,
villainized—nurse in Hollywood, and much could be said about her similarities to Nurse
Ratched (Louise Fletcher) in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975): another “big” nurse
who, one could argue, is simply trying to do her job and do it well. As Gordon writes,
“Nurses tend to be handmaids or horror shows,” and transgressive gender performance
rather than skill or motive may determine which.[iv]

When Annie asks Paul
to burn his new
book—one she deems
distasteful and full of
profanity with “no
nobility”—she claims
she’s trying to help
him, using the same
tone she had in the
beginning nursing
scenes. Paul’s book indicates a state of unwellness, one that is so malformed it doesn’t
even have a title. Its own author doesn’t understand it, asking Annie to tell him what it’s
about: in other words, asking Annie to diagnose it. Burning the book is, therefore, an act
of mercy and healing that is accompanied by pain. As with most of the procedures she
performs on him, Annie gives Paul Novril afterwards and sets him up as a writer again,
just as she set his legs. The writing studio, with its makeshift typewriter and problematic
paper, is a split meant to re-form him into his previous state of writing health. The
healing novel, Misery’s Return, becomes directly connected to healthcare as it is, as
Annie says, “a book in my honor, for saving your life and nursing you back to health.” It
is during this exchange that Paul acknowledges her to be “his favorite nurse,” the
missing “N” on the typewriter matching two letters in her name. It is when Annie is

63

administering harsh medicine to heal his ailing writing that she becomes most
aggressive in her care, confessing that she loves him. And then breaking his ankles.
While Annie uses Paul’s writing to monitor his health, Paul also encounters a collection
of texts that indicates her approach to medicine more broadly. When he escapes from
his room, he finds a scrapbook in Annie’s living room, “Memory Lane,” which includes
newspaper clippings and other memorabilia from her past. It catches his eye because it
has been left open at a “medical record” in progress: his own. Two clippings report his
disappearance and that he is presumed dead. Annie likely suspects these will be the last
stories about her current patient. Yet, the ambiguity of them, so unlike the rest of the
entries, indicates that her treatment is not yet finished. Amy Palko theorizes that the
fragmented and skeletal nature of the scrapbook “allows [the textual poacher] to pick
out the narratives that are most relevant to them and to remove them from their
original context in order to re-position those narratives in a text of their own devising….
As the pages are turned, one can follow the meandering gait of a textual poacher; a
consumer that refuses the passivity demanded of them.”[v] In repurposing newspaper

clippings that are about her
without mentioning her, Annie
actively reclaims them and her
role within their stories. And not
just within them, but as the
orchestrator of their events, the
head nurse.

Other pages include obituaries
and news reports. The accidental
and near identical deaths of her
father and a fellow nursing
student document her early work
before pursing medical

64

education. Records show cancer patients, both sports coaches, who die after agonizing
illnesses. A used car salesman and a pediatrician are both permanently relieved of
unstable conditions. These clippings are interspersed with announcements of Annie’s
own successful career in school and within medical units, as well as cheerful greeting
cards and scraps that frequently say, “Bon Voyage.” The cheerful cards are just as much
part of Annie’s records as the newspapers, denoting her involvement in each death and
documenting it as a success: the responsible act of a caring nurse putting her patients
out of their misery, not the hateful violence of an evil person committing murder. Except
for the early cases, most of these stories describe the deaths in medical terms—cancer,
pneumonia, stroke—suggesting that she knows how to make her treatments resemble
expected fatal conditions. The viewer sees little of the details[vi] of what exactly she is
curing—the patients in pain or coma might be most obvious—and it’s likely that
patients were either unaware of her involvement or unwelcoming of it. And then she
started to euthanize babies.

Four separate clippings
report infant deaths,
some claiming they died
peacefully in their sleep
while others mention
formula, suffocation, or
brain hemorrhaging.
King’s novel suggests
that Annie saw these
babies as “Poor things. Poor, poor things,” too pure for the world, and the cheerful
pictures of babies and flowers around these announcements in the scrapbook suggest
the film might make the same insinuation.[vii] Perhaps she thought to save them from
parents whom she deemed unworthy, or perhaps she interpreted their crying as a sign
of internal disorder that must be cured before it could grow. Whatever the malady,

65

death was the treatment. The last clippings show her arrest, trial, and innocence. And, of
course she’s innocent. She’s only being the best nurse she can be. So, when she attacks
Paul for insisting that Misery’s death in childbirth in the eighteenth century was by
chance—that “she just slipped away”—she accuses him of murder. She knows, despite
what her newspaper clippings say, that patients do not “just slip away.” They need the
help of a good nurse to make that happen.

Annie, then, doesn’t just struggle with the limitations of her role as nurse, she has no
limitations. Her reading practices as number one fan are inseparable from her medical
practice as number one nurse. While Annie clearly lies to Paul about contacting the
hospital or his agent, the genuine cheer with which she delivers this news makes it less
clear whether she believes it herself. When she claims to have talked to the head
orthopedic surgeon, who “said,” “As long as there’s no infection, you’re not in any
danger,” she’s praising her own healing work. Coaxing the unwell body into a state of
dependence is part of her care, taking medical authority to the extreme for the “good”
of her patient. And Paul learns that he can use this authority to his advantage. To hide
the pills he’s stolen, all he has to do is plead, “please make the pain go away,” handing
her the medical power she guards so closely and enacting dependence that Foucault

would say is part of the
authoritative medical
gaze.[viii] After all, she
had told him, “You’d
better hope nothing
happens to me. If I die,
you die,” though it
seems all along that
this might happen
anyway.

66

Thus, Misery is not just a satirical horror statement about fan culture and obsessive
reading; it is an important entry in the subgenre of medical horror. Kathy Bates said in a
2015 interview that she was originally disappointed that the scene in the novel in which
Annie amputates Paul’s foot was changed to breaking his ankles for the
film.[ix] Whether she meant it this way or not, her character would have said the same:
breaking an ankle is not a medical procedure, but amputation certainly is. It is this
subversion of medical practices into methods of captivity and the hidden subtext of the
newspaper clippings about patient deaths that prompt questions about the underlying
potential for all medicine to turn dark and foreboding. In situating herself outside the
regulated and institutional space of the hospital—having become unwelcome there—
Annie and her continued use of its practices show how easily the power with which
patients entrust their doctors and nurses might become the power of a kidnapper over
their hostage—a villain over their victim.

Notes:
[i] Lant, 89-91.
[ii] Benedictus.
[iii] Gordon, 152.
[iv] Gordon, 154.
[v] Palko, 60
[vi] Some clippings consist of the same paragraph repeated several times, obviously
because they shot doesn’t last long enough for the viewer to read beyond the first few
lines. This also speaks to the repetition and fixation on just a few details that
characterize Annie’s care.
[vii] King, 192
[viii] See Michel Foucault’s The Birth of the Clinic (1963).
[ix] Serico

67

Works Cited:
Benedictus, Leo. “Would American Psycho Be Published Today? How Shocking Books

Have Changed with their Readers.” The Guardian, 2 May 2019.
Gordon, Suzanne. Nursing Against the Odds: How Health Care Cost Cutting, Media

Stereotypes, and Medical Hubris Undermine Nurses and Patient Care. Cornell
University Press, 2005.
King, Stephen. Misery. Signet, 1988.
Lant, Kathleen Margaret. “The Rape of Constant Reader: Stephen King’s Construction of
the Female Reader and Violation of the Female Body in Misery.” Journal of
Popular Culture, vol. 30, no. 4, 2004, pp. 89-114.
Misery. Directed by Rob Reiner, Columbia Pictures, 1990.
Palko, Amy. “Poaching the Print: Theorising the Scrapbook in Stephen King’s Misery.”
International Journal of the Book, vol. 4. no. 3, 2007, pp. 59-62.
Serico, Chris. “‘Misery’ Loves Company! Kathy Bates, James Caan Reunite to Discuss 1990
Film.” Today, 11 Oct. 2015.

68

“I’LL BE SEEING YOU”: TRAUMA
AS UNCANNY HORROR IN
MISERY

Cody Parish and Kristen Ann Leer

Aside from its infamous “hobbling scene,” the most indelible moment of director Rob
Reiner’s 1990 film adaptation of Stephen King’s novel, Misery (1987), occurs when
fictional writer Paul Sheldon “sees” his dead captor and obsessed fan Annie Wilkes again
months after his escape from her remote mountain home.[i] While talking with his
literary agent about his new novel in a fine-dining New York restaurant, Paul looks up to
see Annie dressed as a waitress approaching his table.[ii] As the two make eye contact,
she raises a butcher knife menacingly from her rolling cart, but Paul recognizes her to be
a hallucination. This moment is terrifying for its suddenness, brevity, and utter
destruction of the sense of safety viewers normally expect in a denouement. It also
visually depicts Paul suffering a hallmark symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder
(PTSD), producing a significant shift in attention to the horror of traumatic experience.
Drawing from key ideas and concepts of trauma studies, a comparative analysis of King’s
novel and Reiner’s adaptation of Misery reveals the story’s horror derives just as much

from Paul’s post-
traumatic psychological
response to the brutal
violence he endures as
it does from the
violence itself. While
until recently much of
horror cinema has
refrained from
exploring the traumatic
impact of the violence

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its survivors experience, the haunting depiction of PTSD in Misery[iii] distinguishes itself
from its contemporaries by doing just that, framing trauma as a potent source of horror.

Trauma studies scholar Cathy Caruth defines PTSD as “a response, sometimes delayed,
to an overwhelming event or events, which takes the form of repeated, intrusive
hallucinations, dreams, thoughts or behaviors stemming from the event, along with
numbing that may have begun during or after the experience, and possibly also
increased arousal to (and avoidance of) stimuli recalling the event.”[iv] According to
Judith Herman in her seminal work on trauma, Trauma and Recovery (1992, 2015), the
most common symptoms of this disorder can be categorized as hyperarousal, intrusion,
and constriction. Hyperarousal occurs after the post-traumatic event, when the survivor
continues to live on high alert, “as if the danger might return at any moment.” Intrusion
entails the disruptive return of the traumatic event, in which the survivor spontaneously
experiences the moment of trauma with the same force and vividness of the original
violence. Finally, survivors may suddenly enter a numb, trance-like state of surrender in
what is known as constriction, dissociating completely to avoid situations that may
trigger post-traumatic episodes.[v] In Misery, Paul experiences two of these three
hallmark symptoms of PTSD after escaping captivity: hyperarousal and intrusion.
Interestingly, Caruth describes PTSD as a “historical phenomenon … in which the
overwhelming events of the past repeatedly possess, in intrusive images and thoughts,
the one who has lived through them.”[vi] The ability of a past trauma to “possess” a
survivor in the present suggests the “haunting power” of traumatic memory,[vii] a power
that recalls Sigmund Freud’s notion of “the uncanny.”Freud introduces the uncanny in
his appropriately titled essay, “The Uncanny” [“Das Unheimliche”] (1919, 1957), a
psychoanalytic concept that has become incredibly influential within horror studies.
Freud begins his analysis of the word uncanny, or unheimlich in German, by defining it
in relation to canny, or heimlich. Unheimlich means “unhomely” or unfamiliar,
and heimlich refers to the opposite, namely that which is “homely” or familiar.[viii] After
tracing the etymology of heimlich, Freud finds that at some point its definition

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paradoxically assumes the meaning of unheimlich. In other words, canny becomes
uncanny and vice versa. It is the blurring of supposedly fixed boundaries between these
two words that comes to define Freud’s concept of the uncanny. Within horror studies,
then, the uncanny may refer to the blurring of markers distinguishing, for example, the
present from the past, the living from the dead, or the human from the inhuman.

With regard to the function of traumatic memory in Misery (both the film adaptation
and the novel), the uncanny refers specifically to the blurring of the real and imaginary
for the post-traumatic survivor, i.e., Paul, who has difficulty distinguishing between the
two planes of perception in the months following his rescue.[ix] This framing is
important because trauma studies scholars have actively balked at attempts to examine
trauma through a psychoanalytic lens. Bessel A. Van Der Kolk and Onno Van Der Hart
take particular issue with scholars who claim survivors of trauma repress traumatic
memories, implying survivors deliberately push these memories down into an
inaccessible subconscious. Instead, the authors argue that the term dissociation is most
appropriate because it refers to an involuntary coping response from the survivor to
distance themselves from the traumatic experience.[x] Repression, or “the return of the
repressed,” is a fundamental component of Freud’s conception of the uncanny, however.
The return of the repressed refers to something from the past that was repressed from
consciousness and subsequently produces an anxiety that leads to its return in a form at
once familiar and unfamiliar to the subject.[xi] Much of horror scholarship has traded
heavily on “the return of the repressed” as part of the uncanny; we argue, though, that
only the inherently transgressive nature of the uncanny—its ability to blur seemingly
fixed boundaries—applies to the analysis of Paul’s PTSD in Misery.

While the film adaptation of Misery offers only its final scene as a glimpse into the
traumatized mind of Paul, readers will find two harrowing post-traumatic moments at
the end of the novel that exemplify the uncanniness of PTSD through its symptoms of
hyperarousal and intrusion. Following his rescue from Annie’s home, Paul continues to

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“see” Annie in his daily life. Paul has one particularly lucid PTSD episode when he thinks
he encounters Annie alive in his apartment: “Annie rose up from behind the sofa like a
white ghost, dressed in a nurse’s uniform and cap. The axe was in her hand and she was
screaming.”[xii] Paul admits to falling down and having to stifle a scream before
realizing his hallucination of Annie was just his Siamese cat. Annie reappears without
warning a final time while Paul tries to write: “He heard a noise behind him and turned
from the blank screen to see Annie coming out of the kitchen dressed in jeans and a red
flannel logger’s shirt, the chainsaw in her hands.”[xiii] This time he blinks, and she
disappears. The horror of these two episodes rests on their uncanniness. Annie’s sudden,
impossible returns pose very real existential threats to Paul’s life, or so the reader is led
to believe. Paul cannot distinguish reality from imagination, and it is clear that he
remains hyperaroused, constantly anticipating Annie’s ambush and revealing how
traumatic memories of Annie intrude violently into his life without warning.

Annie maintains a constant, almost supernatural grip over Paul’s consciousness even
after death, proof of the omnipotence that captors often assume in the eyes of their
victims. Herman dedicates an entire chapter of Trauma and Recovery to captivity trauma,
writing, “In situations of captivity, the perpetrator becomes the most powerful person in
the life of the victim, and the psychology of the victim is shaped by the actions and
beliefs of the perpetrator.” Herman claims that captors instill fear in their victims
through “inconsistent and unpredictable outbursts of violence and by capricious
enforcement of petty rules.”[xiv] This behavior transforms the perpetrator into an almost
omniscient being in relation to their victims.

Annie follows this blueprint in order to gradually condition Paul to see her as a god-like
fixture in his life. In the film, she chastises him for the profanity in his new manuscript,
saying, “It has no nobility.” This arbitrary aversion to cursing leads Annie to give Paul an
ultimatum: burn his manuscript—what she calls “filth”—or she will burn him alive in his
bed. The threat of violence as an enforcement tactic always harbors the potential for real

72

harm, for any time Paul upsets Annie, whether through his words or actions or even his
writing, she reacts with increasingly erratic cruelty. In one particularly telling episode,
after Annie finishes reading the latest of the Misery series, Misery’s Child, she bursts into
Paul’s bedroom despite its being the middle of the night, screaming with psychotic rage
at him: “You murdered my Misery!” During this encounter, she vigorously shakes his
bedframe, triggering intense pain in Paul’s shattered legs, breaks a potted plant, and
bashes a wooden stand to pieces above his head. Her spontaneous burst of anger and
violence cows Paul with fear, and he goes to extreme lengths to avoid inciting Annie’s
wrath as he plots his eventual escape. Yet, during the hobbling scene in the film,
Annie displays an all-seeing knowledge of Paul’s covert movements, which she recounts
with horrifying accuracy before she bludgeons his ankles with a sledgehammer. She
explains how Paul
used a bobby pin
to unlock his
bedroom door,
reveals other clues
like the misplaced
penguin figurine
that tipped her off
to his behavior,
and brandishes the
butcher knife he had hidden beneath his mattress and with which he hoped to kill her.
The brutal act that follows this revelation establishes Annie as the vengeful god of Paul’s
life once and for all, a psychotic captor who holds his sovereignty firmly within her
unstable hands.

Although it is omitted from the film adaptation, Annie earns the moniker “the goddess”
from Paul in the novel as a result of her punitive behavior. That Paul even attempts to
kill her is an amazing act of courage, but it only provides Annie another opportunity to

73

defy the laws of reality. After suffering an ostensible deathblow to the head, Annie
inexplicably regains consciousness in a moment of omnipotent invincibility, invoking a
long history within the horror genre of the villain suddenly leaping back to life for one
final scare. “You can’t kill the goddess,” Paul thinks to himself upon seeing Annie’s eyes
open. “The goddess is immortal.”[xv] It is as if everything Paul suspects about his captor
has come true: Annie can never be killed. Of course, this proves not to be the case, as
she does eventually die—in the novel from head trauma and blood loss, and in the
movie from blunt head trauma. However, “Annie the goddess,” the omnipotent persona
Annie has developed, does, indeed, live on through Paul’s traumatic memories.

As Herman claims, “Long after their liberation, people who have been subjected to
coercive control bear the psychological scars of captivity.”[xvi] Paul’s devout,
conditioned belief in Annie’s immortality primes him for sustained trauma after his
escape, transforming the conclusion of the narrative into arguably the most frightening
part of all. Each time the memory of Annie intrudes to attack Paul from the afterlife,
audiences become increasingly hyperaroused themselves, adopting Paul’s post-
traumatic symptoms. In this way, Annie’s omnipotent influence over Paul and the
audience grows. It makes sense, then, that the epilogue of the novel in which Paul (and
readers) must grapple with his post-traumatic stress is titled “GODDESS.”[xvii] When
Paul sees Annie emerge with an axe from behind the couch in his apartment, he
imagines her beheading him, thinking to himself, “Goddess,” before he dies in his
hallucination.[xviii] Safety is never in his reach. Annie could always be around the corner,
waiting in the shadows to spring her attack. Paul knows that she is dead, but trauma and
its symptoms transcend both certain knowledge and death: “Annie Wilkes was in her
grave. But, like Misery Chastain, she rested there uneasily. In his dreams and waking
fantasies, he dug her up again and again. You couldn’t kill the goddess.”[xix] Like a
ghost, trauma remains a haunting threat to the survivor. In a twist of fate most unfair,
Annie maintains a firm influence over Paul’s life even after her death.

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When Paul “sees” Annie once more as his waitress in the film adaptation, it is significant
that his expression betrays no fear. Indeed, Paul reacts with stoic assurance to this
uncanny hallucination of Annie brandishing a knife. He knows it to be imaginary even as
the audience recoils in fright. Here Paul displays what Lawrence G. Calhoun and Richard
G. Tedeschi call “posttraumatic growth.” Calhoun and Tedeschi define posttraumatic

growth as an experience
of positive change
following a traumatic life
event.[xx] The authors
offer five domains of
change most commonly
noted by survivors: new
possibilities, relating to
others, personal strength,
spiritual change, and
appreciation of life.[xxi] Of these domains, Paul testifies to a greater appreciation of life
and new possibilities as a result of his traumatic experience. In the eighteen months
since his escape, Paul has published an acclaimed new novel, and he confesses to his
agent that “in some way, Annie Wilkes and that whole experience helped me.”

In this final scene of the film, Paul appears to have outgrown his trauma, relegating
Annie to his past. It is a moment that does not feel as earned as it does in the novel.
What it suggests, however, is a sense of closure. In the movie, Paul sees Annie die before
his eyes after striking her with a flat iron; Paul is granted no such grace in the novel.
Instead, he waits in delirious, paranoid hysteria to be rescued by police, who tell him
Annie is nowhere to be found in the home. Only afterward is he informed that she died
in the barn from her wounds, her hand resting on a chainsaw. With this knowledge, but
without his own visual confirmation of her death, Paul suffers repeated, vivid post-
traumatic intrusions of Annie dismembering him. Conventional wisdom says seeing is

75

believing, but sight proves to be no less reliable in discerning hallucination from
reality—in offering closure for Paul and for audiences. Only with time and the re-
establishment of safety and a support system is Paul able to lay the traumatic memories
of Annie to rest. In doing so, Paul regains his identity as a writer, finding his voice in a
new manuscript and imagining a future for himself beyond the gaze of “the goddess.”

Misery therefore champions themes of resilience, survival, and posttraumatic growth. It
concludes with its protagonist triumphing over his PTSD, reasserting agency over his life
by correctly discerning the real from the uncanny imaginary. Yet, as we have learned,
seeing is not believing. As the credits roll, “I’ll Be Seeing You in All the Familiar Places”
plays, a song that, in this context, offers a sobering reminder of the reality of trauma. As
Paul says, “You couldn’t kill the goddess.” He can never actually escape Annie, for she
will return to torment him again and again through his traumatic memory. This, more
than the violence he suffers, is Misery’s enduring horror.

Notes:
[i] When we use the term “see” in this analysis, we are referring to Paul’s experience of a
post-traumatic hallucination. The hallucination appears real to Paul and to us as viewers
for two reasons. First, Misery is filmed from Paul’s perspective, and viewers identify with
him through POV shots and other cinematography choices. As a result, Paul’s experience
becomes our own, meaning that we endure alongside Paul these post-traumatic
intrusions where the lines between the real and the imaginary are blurred. In these
moments, Paul’s sight becomes unreliable, thus warranting scare quotes around what he
“sees.”
[ii] This scene does not occur in the novel. Rather, it is only after Paul returns home to
his apartment that the memory of Annie intrudes on him from behind the couch,
ambushing him with her axe.
[iii] We will clarify when our analysis refers to the film adaptation of Misery or the novel
as necessary. In moments when we do not do so, we are using Misery to refer to the
story itself regardless of the medium through which it is told.

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[iv] Caruth, 4.
[v] Herman, 35, 37, 42-3.
[vi] Caruth, 151.
[vii] Ibid., 4.
[viii] Freud, 219.
[ix] We recognize that trauma derives its uncanniness also from transgressing
boundaries between the past and the present. However, cinema is a visual mode of
storytelling, foregrounding the image in the process of producing suspense and fear.
Discerning the real from the imaginary arguably becomes most important for audiences
watching a horror film. Given the aim of our analysis—to explore how traumatic memory
generates horror within Misery—we have deliberately limited the scope of this essay to
examining how the portrayal of PTSD in Misery blurs the real and the imaginary.
[x] Van Der Kolk and Van Der Hart, 168.
[xi] Freud, 241.
[xii] Annie wields an axe in the novel as opposed to a sledgehammer or butcher knife.
She admits to having killed a younger boyfriend with the axe and uses it to amputate
one of Paul’s feet instead of breaking his ankles. The axe, then, is Annie’s signature
weapon in the novel. King, 414; pt. 4, ch. 3.
[xiii] King, 418; pt. 4, ch. 9.
[xiv] Herman, 75, 77.
[xv] King, 398, emphasis original; pt. 3, ch. 44.
[xvi] Herman, 95.
[xvii] King, 409; pt. 4.
[xviii] King, 415, emphasis original; pt. 4, ch. 3.
[xix] King, 417; pt. 4, ch. 7.
[xx] Calhoun and Tedeschi, 96.
[xxi] Tedeschi and Calhoun, 459.

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Works Cited:
Caruth, Cathy. Introduction to I. Trauma and Experience. Trauma: Explorations in

Memory, edited by Cathy Caruth, John Hopkins UP, 1995, pp. 3-12.
—. Introduction to II. Recapturing the Past. Trauma: Explorations in Memory, edited by

Cathy Caruth, John Hopkins UP, 1995, pp. 151-57.
Calhoun, Lawrence G., and Richard G. Tedeschi. “The Foundations of Posttraumatic

Growth: New Considerations.” Psychological Inquiry, vol. 15, no. 1, 2004, pp. 93-
102.
Freud, Sigmund. “The Uncanny.” The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological
Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XVII (1917-1919): An Infantile Neurosis and
Other Works. Reprint. Translated by James Strachey, Hogarth Press and the
Institute of Psychoanalysis, 1957, pp. 217-56.
Herman, Judith. Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—From Domestic Abuse
to Political Terror. 1992. Basic Books, 2015.
King, Stephen. Misery. 1987. Pocket Books, 2017.
Misery. Directed by Rob Reiner, Columbia Pictures, 1990.
Tedeschi, Richard G., and Lawrence G. Calhoun. “The Posttraumatic Growth Inventory:
Measuring the Positive Legacy of Trauma.” Journal of Traumatic Stress, vol. 9, no.
3, 1996, pp. 455-71.
Van Der Kolk, Bessel A., and Onno Van Der Hart. “The Intrusive Past: The Flexibility of
Memory and the Engraving of Trauma.” Trauma: Explorations in Memory, edited
by Cathy Caruth, John Hopkins UP, 1995, pp. 158-82.

78

MISERY: A TYPICAL NINETIES
HORROR?

Phil Hobbins-White

Rob Reiner’s big-screen adaptation of Stephen King’s novel (1987) was released in
1990, blending conventions from the psychological thriller and horror genre, as well as
utilising other elements which became common in horror films later in the decade. What
follows here will be an exploration of the landscape of cinema in the years surrounding
the film’s release, and the extent to which Misery reflects the most prevalent
conventions and tropes of nineties horror films.

The 1980s saw the release of many financially lucrative sequels, such as A Nightmare
on Elm Street (1984 et al). ‘Sequelitis’ – the seemingly contagious tendency for film
franchises to churn out sequels – showed not only that horror fans were willing to
consume further instalments of these horror sagas but also that there was a lack of
originality and creativity in the genre. Occasionally, the repetition of plots and tropes
caused these films to descend into pastiche. Another common trait of the eighties horror
film was the emergence of the body horror subgenre (such as Videodrome, 1983) and
the often gory and controversial straight-to-video horror films – dubbed ‘video nasties’ in
the U.K. – able to be watched in the privacy of the viewer’s own home.

The film landscape in the nineties

In the 1990s, the overall film landscape – horror and otherwise – started to change, with
studios and producers realising the need to appeal to teen audiences again. This is
shown by the hugely popular teen films such as Clueless (1995) and Romeo +
Juliet (1996), and the creation of an army of teen superstars such as Leonardo
DiCaprio, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Johnny Depp and Alicia Silverstone. The production of
teen-centered films featuring teen stars in order to appeal to teen audiences also

79

extended to the horror genre. Whilst some franchises which originated in the eighties
such as Child’s Play (1988 et al.) and Puppet Master (1989 et al.) continued to release
sequels, films such as Scream (1996) and I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)
encouraged greater audience alignment with protagonists, rather than simply killing
them, as had often happened in many horror films previously.

In addition to teen characters and stars, nineties horror films also distinguished
themselves from their eighties counterparts by regularly utilising conventions from the
thriller genre, most commonly the psychological thriller. One of the most famous
psychological thrillers of the nineties, The Silence of the Lambs (1991), features multiple
dialogue-heavy scenes in which FBI trainee Clarice Starling gets drawn into a
psychological game with the incarcerated serial killer Hannibal Lecter. These scenes
allow the antagonist’s character to develop, providing the audience with their backstory
and motivations, and potentially causing some viewers to sympathise to some extent at
least with the psychopath, creating a disturbing feeling. Seven (1995), another
psychological thriller that contains horrifyingly morbid scenes, also explains the
motivations of its serial killer. Whilst ‘John Doe’ has considerably less screen time than
Hannibal Lecter, the audience is fully exposed to the psychology behind the killer’s
potential motives as detectives discover slayings and clues according to the seven
deadly sins, one-by-one. Both films’ killers are well-developed, charismatic and become
believable to the audience, in complete juxtaposition with many of the two-dimensional
killers from previous decades.

Continuing the trend of fully developing its killer(s) was the slasher film Scream. The film
continued the trend of featuring a number of established young stars such as Drew
Barrymore and Courtney Cox, as well as emerging stars Neve Campbell, Rose
McGowan and Jamie Kennedy. Scream can be considered a quintessential nineties
horror film owing to its self-referential and postmodern qualities. The extent to
which Scream demonstrates reflexivity and self-consciousness led theorist Valerie Wee

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to identify the emergence of “hyperpostmodernism,” which she defined as an increased
degree of intertextual references (which serves as the actual text), as well as actively
referencing, borrowing from and influencing other media forms.[1] During a number of
scenes, characters in Scream discuss horror tropes and their favourite scenes, and the
director, Wes Craven, often toys with his audience’s expectations. Of the relationship
between self-consciousness and the horror genre, theorist Andrew Tudor said that “-
some degree of awareness has always been a key element” in the horror film’s appeal
to audiences, and that genre conventions are “routinely textually played
upon.”[2] Whilst Scream certainly wasn’t the first horror film to utilise postmodernism, it
was implemented so successfully that it helped shape the genre in the nineties and
beyond.[3]

Postmodern slashers such as Scream and Scream 2 (1997), and the psychological
horror The Silence of the Lambs, weren’t the only films to dominate the horror box office
in the nineties, of course. The era can also be characterised by the successes of star-
driven, high-budget period films such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), Interview with
the Vampire (1994) and Sleepy Hollow (1999), demonstrating that horror films with long-
established characters and narratives were just as popular as ever. Whilst this is true,
another defining trait of horror films in the nineties is also innovation, reflected in the
decade’s two most commercially successful films: The Sixth Sense (1999) which
deployed an unpredictable plot twist in its ghost story, and The Blair Witch
Project (1999), perhaps the first horror film to convincingly implement the ‘found
footage’ technique.

Reflecting nineties horror conventions

Scream can perhaps be considered the defining horror film of the 1990s, with its
teenage characters, future stars, exploration of the killer’s motivations, self-reflexivity
and playful tone. Misery, conversely, might not spring to mind quite so quickly as a

81

definitive nineties horror; however, it does share some of the typical conventions. One
such comparison is the tendency of horror films in the nineties to develop the villain’s
character, providing their backstory and allowing the audience to discover their
motivations, possibly creating some sympathy with the villain.

This is certainly true of Annie
Wilkes in Misery. Annie’s
motivations are born from her
love of popular writer Paul
Sheldon’s romance novels
featuring the character Misery
Chastain. Annie is in love with
these stories, and with Paul
too – she is his “number one
fan” – as the Misery novels provide her life with meaning, escape, and fantasy. Annie
‘lives’ the world of Misery, demonstrating how essential it is to her existence: she has a
shrine dedicated to Misery and Paul, has named her pet pig after her heroine, and can
recall the most meaningless of facts about both Paul or Misery on a whim. Upon hearing
Annie’s story of how she began reading the Misery novels, it is possible for the
audience to start feeling sympathy for her: “When my husband left me I wasn’t
prepared, it wasn’t an easy time. For a while I thought I might go crazy,” Annie tells
Paul. The exposition of Annie’s backstory continues by informing the audience that
the Misery books gave Annie pleasure during lonely night shifts working as a nurse – an
honourable and often underappreciated profession, which again, might start to convince
the audience to develop compassion for her. Yet it is when the pair hold a candle-lit
dinner together to celebrate Misery’s return, that the audience’s sympathies for Annie
peak, and we are tempted to forget her violent outbursts completely. Receiving Paul’s
sudden suggestion of dinner, Annie is completely smitten, her face filled with ecstasy.
This is surely Annie’s first ‘date’ in a long time, and knowing that Paul intends to kill her

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using the painkillers he has been stockpiling, the audience potentially feel complicit in
the murder of a devoted fan.
As viewers learn of Annie’s history, get to know her personality, and discover her
motivations, it is possible to see how these conventions are used to develop other
nineties horror villains, whose motives are also made clear to the audience. Scream’s
Billy and Stu are developed throughout the film as they are at first presumed to be
innocent characters–the love interest and friend of protagonist Sidney. Later, their
motives are explained as revenge and peer pressure, respectively. This convention is
also used in The Silence of the Lambs, in which Hannibal Lecter is portrayed as
charismatic and often likeable, despite being a serial killing cannibal. Furthermore, his
motives are explained (in the source novel) as being as a result of childhood trauma
caused by witnessing the murder and cannibalism of his beloved sister, which again,
might cause feelings of sympathy in the audience.

Figure 1 Annie towers over Paul in a rage.

Another convention that Misery shares with a number of successful nineties horror films
is its blending with the psychological thriller. Just as films such as The Silence of the

83

Lambs and Seven featured detectives investigating crimes, questions surrounding
identity, suspenseful sequences and low-key lighting, Misery also successfully utilises
these conventions. Nightmarish and dimly-lit scenes occur twice in Misery: first, when
Annie attacks Paul during the night upon discovering that he has killed Misery in the
final novel. Another occurs later when Paul wakes in the night due to the sound of rain
and thunder and is then shocked to see Annie standing over him, ready to inject him
with a sedative. These scenes serve to tell the audience that Annie can enter Paul’s
bedroom at any time, and he is helpless to prevent it.

Thriller conventions are used at various times throughout Misery. Director Rob Reiner
often chooses to use inserts of objects such as a cigarette, a match, the typewriter or
the misplaced ornament which tells Annie of Paul’s escape from his bedroom, all of
which provide clues to the audience and create suspense. In preparation for the
production of Misery, Reiner revisited a number of thrillers by ‘the master of suspense’
Alfred Hitchcock, which is evident by the high number of inserts, a typical trait of the
Hitchcock thriller. The nineties horror film’s use of thriller conventions is shown
in Misery when Paul seizes the opportunity to explore the house and possibly escape
when Annie goes to buy supplies from the store. Both Paul and the audience know he
has a limited amount of time at his disposal, therefore it is excruciating to watch him
struggle to retrieve the dropped bobby pin needed to unpick the door lock, then having
to re-position his wheelchair several times while struggling to pick the lock. Whilst the
audience witness these difficulties, at several moments we are provided with cross-cuts
to Annie’s progress on her trip to the store – information that Paul obviously is not given
– and the audience therefore feels helpless.[4]Throughout this sequence, as Annie
starts her journey back to the house and Paul’s time runs out, the cuts get faster,
increasing the tension and suspense. This scene is perhaps the clearest example of a
thriller convention in Misery, and is reminiscent of the climax to The Silence of the
Lambs. During this scene, cross-cutting is used to show Clarice simultaneously arriving

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at a property as the FBI arrive at another, yet it is the isolated Clarice who encounters
the psychopathic serial killer Buffalo Bill.

The final convention that Misery shares with a number of successful nineties horror
films is a postmodernist style. Similarly to Scream’s characters referencing other horror
films, or even Scream 2 featuring a film made about the events depicted in the
franchise’s first instalment, Misery also contains elements from outside the world of the

text. One example of this is
shown by Paul’s occupation as
a successful writer, like Stephen
King.[5] Paul intends to end
the Misery series, despite their
huge popularity with fans such
as Annie. King made his
reputation as a popular horror
novelist, but his fantasy Eyes of
the Dragon (1984) received
criticism from fans who were dismayed at the shift in genre and style. Of his fans, King
said “some of them are quite crackers. I don’t think I have met Annie Wilkes yet, but I’ve
met all sorts of people who call themselves my “number one fan”.[6] This creates a link
between author and character, and between reality and fiction–a distinctive postmodern
style akin to that of many other nineties horror films.

Challenging nineties horror conventions

Despite the various ways in which Misery reflects nineties horror film conventions, there
are also examples of how it challenges these traits, too. Films such as Scream, I Know
What You Did Last Summer and The Blair Witch Project are considered as archetypal
nineties horror films, and it is immediately clear that Misery shares very few conventions

85

with these films in terms of narrative or style. Furthermore, Misery’s cast and characters
challenges the nineties horror film convention of featuring teen stars. Misery,
conversely, exclusively comprises middle-aged characters and older – Paul, Annie, and
even the sheriff and his wife all fall into this much older age bracket. Yet the film was
still a commercial and critical hit, proving that a narrative centering teen characters
played by young stars was not essential for success. James Caan, a respected actor
who had a history of playing masculine characters such as Sonny in The Godfather
(1972) was cast against type in the role of Paul. Kathy Bates, who won the Best Actress
Academy Award for her role as Annie, was a surprising, yet perfect choice. Bates was a
relative unknown to film audiences prior to Misery, having only appeared in a small
number of feature films prior to 1990, although she was considered “one of America’s
finest stage actresses,” according to the New York Times.[7] The casting of Caan and
Bates is a huge contrast to that of Neve Campbell and Skeet Ulrich in Scream.

Additionally, Misery is just as much a psychological thriller as it is a horror film. As such
it does not feature the sheer number of jump scares, moments of violence, and high
number of deaths as was a convention of other horror films in the nineties. Scream, I
Know What You Did Last Summer, and Sleepy Hollow all played on audiences’ fears of
the villains’ ability to appear suddenly: occasionally they would appear (and would
increase the death count) and other times the menace would merely be implied. Misery,
however, only uses jump tactics twice, both times when Annie appears over Paul during
the night. Of course, Misery is still frightening; however, the fear is created more by
Annie’s sudden bouts of rage and her believability as a character. Misery favours a
greater emphasis on threat and psychological torture, thus challenging the nineties
horror convention of explicit violence.

Arriving at the start of the nineties, and created from Stephen King’s source
material, Misery was not consciously attempting to reflect or challenge nineties horror
conventions; it has a unique style and identity all of its own. Yet through the

86

development of Annie Wilkes’ character as the villain (which allows the audience to
understand her motivations), along with the blending of the psychological thriller and
postmodern elements, it is possible to see how Misery reflects (and possibly even
creates) horror film conventions which were developed by other films later in the
decade.

Notes:
[1] Wee, 44.
[2] Tudor, 110.
[3] For further reading into horror and postmodernism, Isabel Pinedo’s Recreational
Terror, pp. 9-50, is highly recommended. Pinedo discusses the role that hybridity can
play, and offers five characteristics of the postmodern horror film.
[4] Hitchcock employed this exact technique in many films, such as during the climax
to Rear Window (1954).
[5] King also uses authors as characters in other novels including It, Salem’s
Lot and The Shining.
[6] Beahm, 187.
[7] Sacks.

Works Cited:
A Nightmare on Elm Street. Directed by Wes Craven, New Line Cinema, 1984.
Beahm, George. The Stephen King Story. Andrews and McMeel, 1991.
The Blair Witch Project. Directed by Daniel Myrick / Eduardo Sánchez, Artisan

Entertainment, 1999.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, Columbia Pictures, 1992.
Candyman. Directed by Bernard Rose, TriStar Pictures, 1992.
Child’s Play. Directed by Tom Holland, MGM, 1988.
Clueless. Directed by Amy Heckerling, Paramount Pictures, 1995.
The Godfather. Directed by Francis Ford Coppola, Paramount Pictures, 1972.

87

I Know What You Did Last Summer. Directed by Jim Gillespie, Columbia Pictures,
1997.

Interview with the Vampire. Directed by Neil Jordan, Warner Bros, 1994.
King, Stephen. Eyes of the Dragon. Viking, 1984.
Misery. Directed by Rob Reiner, Columbia Pictures, 1990.
Pinedo, Isabel Cristina. Recreational Terror: Women and the Pleasures of Horror Film

Viewing, State U of New York P, 1997.
Puppet Master. Directed by David Schmoeller, Paramount Pictures, 1989.
Romeo + Juliet. Directed by Baz Luhrmann, Twentieth Century Fox, 1996.
Sacks, David. “I Never Was An Ingenue.” New York Times Magazine, 27 Jan 1991, p.

25. https://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/27/magazine/i-never-was-an-ingenue.html.
Scream. Directed by Wes Craven, Dimension Films, 1996.
Scream 2. Directed by Wes Craven, Dimension Films, 1997.
Seven. Directed by David Fincher, New Line Cinema, 1995.
Sleepy Hollow. Directed by Tim Burton, Paramount Pictures, 1999.
The Silence of the Lambs. Directed by Jonathan Demme, Orion Pictures, 1991.
The Sixth Sense. Directed by M. Night Shyamalan, Buena Vista Pictures, 1999.
Tudor, Andrew. “From Paranoia to Postmodernism?” Genre and Contemporary

Hollywood, edited by Stephen Neale, BFI, 2002.
Wee, Valerie. “The Scream Trilogy, ‘Hyperpostmodernism’, and the Late-Nineties Teen

Slasher Film.” Journal of Film and Video, vol. 57, 2005, pp. 44-61.
Wes Craven’s New Nightmare. Directed by Wes Craven, New Line Cinema, 1994.

88

MISERY’S TYPEWRITER

Marc Olivier

*This essay has been excerpted from Marc Olivier, Household
Horror: Cinematic Fear and the Secret Life of Everyday Objects,
Indiana University Press, 2020, pp. 224-33.

You can find Household Horror at Amazon #ad or on Indiana
University Press’s website.

Another hack writer snowbound in Colorado with a woman he’d like to kill, another
typewriter embroiled in violent conflict over a typescript without end—Misery (1990),
directed by Rob Reiner and adapted by William Goldman from Stephen King’s 1987
novel, has no haunted structure like The Shining’s Overlook Hotel, but the film shares a
central preoccupation with typographic dysfunction and the problem of eternal
return. Misery’s protagonist, Paul Sheldon (James Caan), is trapped by his own success as
the creator of Misery Chastain, heroine of a Victorian-era series of bodice-ripper
romance novels. Prisoner to his “number-one fan,” Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates), Paul must
type his way back to her good graces by resurrecting Misery on a defective Royal 10
typewriter—a sturdy “fifty-pound clunker” that Annie says she got for a great price “on
account of it’s missing an n.” Misery, like The Shining, considers both the musicality and
the violence of type through a writing project as torturously Sisyphean to Paul as “All
work and no play” is to Jack or Wendy Torrance. Misery’s typewriter complicates the
emancipatory narrative often associated with the machine’s invention and dramatizes
the paradoxical coexistence of feminine and masculine tropes associated with its use.
Not one for subtlety, King characterizes typing as autoerotic sublimation: “You beat a
typewriter instead of your meat.”[1] Paul’s survival depends on his ability to channel his
energies through the keyboard, to become Misery, to play the Scheherazade to Annie’s
Shahryar. King’s novel makes that comparison explicit, as Paul reflects, “Yes, he

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supposed he had been his own Scheherazade, just as he was his own dream-woman,” in
his masturbatory fantasies.[2] Paul owes his success as a writer to his ability to transmute
storytelling practices born of masturbation into something that endlessly defers climax.
Scheherazade, who forestalls death through serial storytelling, is the prototype for the
serial novelist or the screenwriters of Annie’s beloved childhood cliffhangers (or “chapter
plays” as she calls them). Paul’s success has depended on his ability to maintain
narrative stamina in order to please women, but he cannot do so without playing a
woman whom he can never truly finish off, for Misery is Paul’s Scheherazade. Thus, the
painfully formulaic plot twist that resurrects Misery on the clunky Royal is inseparable
from social advancement—just as Scheherazade becomes queen and saves her own life
through seriality, Misery’s Return begins, to Annie’s delight, with the surprise revelation
of Misery’s nobility. Paul is king (Shahryar and Stephen) and queen. His life depends on
the coexistence of the demanding reader and the seductive storyteller. Paul cannot “Jack
(Torrance) off” alone in his room all day, for Annie will not abide so much uselessly
spilled ink. Jack’s typescript is type for type’s sake, but Paul Sheldon serves at the
pleasure of Annie Wilkes.

The typewriter complicates the pen-penis metaphor that has no doubt existed for as
long as phallus-shaped writing implements have been placed in the hands of bored
juvenile scribes. While the pen is naturally prone to comparisons with male genitalia, the
typewriter, first marketed as the “machine to supersede the pen,” does not so readily
accommodate sexual euphemisms.[3] The pen maintained its totemic virility (and
continues to do so, if the luxury pen industry is any indicator) while the typewriter
became a machine to prevent “pen paralysis.”[4] E. Remington and Sons, makers of both
firearms and sewing machines, manufactured the Sholes and Glidden typewriter
beginning in 1873 (later renamed the Remington No. 1) and aimed the machine initially
at the male consumer, often exploiting the fear of “pen paralysis” in their advertising.
Pen paralysis, a term that refers to both writer’s cramp and writer’s block, represented a
threat to the chief measure of a man: his productivity. For what good is a man who can

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no longer wield his pen? As late as 1915, advertisements aimed at men were still playing
up the fear of pen paralysis: “Pen Paralysis! Have you got it?” asks Remington in
the Journal of the United States Artillery. Pen writing, the ad copy contends, creates
needless waste that handicaps a man’s time and labor, “a handicap which means partial
paralysis of all his energies.”[5] The implication in pen paralysis fearmongering is never
that the typewriter represents virility but rather that it helps preserve a manly grip by
preventing pointless expenditure of a man’s energy. The typewriter does not supersede
the pen in phallic potency.

In the workplace, the

simultaneous

acceptance of

typewriters and women

coincided to the point

of a creating

misleading conflation

of woman and

Figure 1 Misery‘s typewriter machine. No historian
can resist mentioning

that the word typewriter once referred to either the machine or the woman hired to use

it—another mechanical bride for industrial man. Kittler is only slightly exaggerating

when he writes, “Prior to the invention of the typewriter, all poets, secretaries, and

typesetters were of the same sex.”[6] The percentage of women stenographers and

typists in the United States skyrocketed from 4.5 percent in 1870 to 95.6 percent in

1930.[7] By 1890, less than two decades after the early Sholes and Glidden machines, 60

percent of all typing and stenography jobs were held by women.[8] The gender of

secretaries underwent a radical shift after the invention of the typewriter, but the causal

connection is often overstated.[9] If anything, the typewriter facilitated the transition of

women into the office due to the machine’s lack of a gender. The argument that women

were naturally suited to the typewriter thanks to superior dexterity came after women

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were already working as typists.[10] The Story of the Typewriter, published in 1923 for
the fiftieth anniversary of the typewriter, includes a frontispiece entitled “Emancipation”
and heralds (with angelic figures no less) Sholes as the man who changed women’s lives,
but the emancipatory narrative is best viewed as an attempt to co-opt social and
economic change after the fact.[11]

Kittler, who is quick to repeat the cum hoc fallacy that the typewriter is behind gender
diversification in writing, secretarial work, and typesetting, not long thereafter credits
typeface with the disappearance of “bipolar sexual differentiation.”[12] Simply put, typed
words are desexualized words. “Mechanized and automatic writing refutes the
phallocentrism of classical pens,” says Kittler.[13] Type replaces the steady flow of ink
from the tip of a pen with a depersonalized, fragmented orchestration of writing as a
musical performance. Penmanship paints words; type plays them. Each letter has its
assigned part. No one has ever purchased a pen at a discount “on account of it’s
missing an n.” And so that missing n is not only an opportunity to highlight the reader’s
role in supplementing the text (or Annie’s role as an editor who volunteers to fill them in
by hand); the missing n is also the malfunction that reveals, in the classic Heideggerian
sense, the phenomenology of a tool that would have remained transparent were it not
for the breakdown.

The missing key shows that the “alphabet piano” metaphor is a phenomenological
reality and not just a figure of speech or a sales strategy. Early typewriter history is full of
alternative keyboard layouts (and alternatives to the keyboard), various approaches to
upper- and lowercase letters, and differing levels of visual engagement with the
machine or with the type itself.[14] But the first tectonic shift of the modern typewriter is
the fracturing of writing into keys, whatever their arrangement. That shift disrupts
certain phallocentric associations (but by no means eradicates phallocentrism) and adds
new musical gestures and rhythms similar to classical keyboard instruments. The Samuel
W. Francis writing machine of 1857, a commercially unviable mechanism for typing

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made of wood, metal, and ivory keys, is the most piano-like typewriter ever built, but
even the conventional four rows of black keys on the archetypal 1895 Underwood have
never lost their connection to music.

“The Typewriter,” composed for typewriter and orchestra by Leroy Anderson (best
known for the Christmas song “Sleigh Ride”), exemplifies the comical disjunction and
uncanny correspondence between the typewriter and the piano. The piece features a
soloist seated at a typewriter as if a concert pianist. The typist performs rapid keystrokes
and rhythmic carriage returns accented by the “ding” of typewriter’s bell in time to the
orchestra’s lively accompaniment. That novelty piece was once associated with the
flamboyant showman and pianist Liberace, who, fittingly, is the only man other than
Paul Sheldon that Annie Wilkes honors with a shrine her living room. “I’m going to put
on my Liberace records!” exclaims Annie once Paul brings Misery back to life in the
noble manner that satisfies her standards for verisimilitude. “You do like Liberace, don’t
you?” Paul forces a smile and lies. We know that Paul is a sports-arena kind of guy who
would not be caught dead at a Liberace concert. Thus, the subsequent typing montage
set to Liberace signals acquiescence (after a failed poisoning) to Annie—an oddball
coupling of her two favorite men to parallel the “oddball situation” (as Paul calls it) of
the collaboration. To Annie, the pairing makes perfect sense, while to the audience, the
juxtaposition is as comical as “The Typewriter” novelty piece. The montage shows Paul
typing chapter after chapter of Misery’s Return, extreme close-ups of the hands and
keyboard in profile and from above, arpeggio-like movements of the fingers across the
keys, the occasional flourish of a raised hand, and matched shots of Paul at the machine
in profile spanning days of labor, all performed in lockstep with Liberace’s overwrought
rendition of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1.

The Liberace/Sheldon piano/typewriter montage moves from comical to something
resembling harmony. Paul appears to be writing at record pace, Annie has nothing but
positive feedback, and shots of the sheriff reading one of Paul’s paperbacks complete a

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representation of writing, editing, publishing, and reading—acts that the typewriter
brings into closer association, according to McLuhan.[15] All the while Paul is regaining
strength. He and the typewriter are playing a double game. Paul lifts the typewriter
above his head as if to smash it but then brings it back down, and then we realize that
the old Royal 10
is rehabilitating
the arm that he
keeps in a sling.
The device once
marketed as a
cure for pen
paralysis is now
secretly helping
Paul shoulder-
press his way back to full upper-body strength. After the concerto climaxes, accented by
the “ding” of the typewriter bell and a clap of thunder, the mood shifts. Paul does a few
shoulder presses before Annie walks in looking morose, suicidal, and probably
homicidal. From this point to the end, the typewriter starts to resemble the entity that
frightened Wendy Torrance with its intimate and exclusionary relationship with her
husband, its endless expenditure, and its refusal to satisfy the curious reader with an
anticipated narrative.

McLuhan’s vision of typing as a liberating activity is only partially convincing because,
despite all the talk of emancipation, typing as a (re)generative activity has historically
privileged men over women, just as McLuhan does with his examples: “The poet at the
typewriter can do Njinsky leaps or Chaplin-like shuffles and wiggles. Because he is an
audience for his own mechanical audacities, he never ceases to react to his own
performance. Composing on the typewriter is like flying a kite”[16]—or like
masturbating. The book that Paul finished before his captivity, the one Annie hates and

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demands that he, an “old dirty birdie,” burn in order to be cleansed, has no title and, by
Paul’s own admission, no discernable plot. “What’s it about?” asks Annie. “It’s crazy, but I
don’t really know,” says Paul. Of course, we know the book is a gritty,
semiautobiographical tale of life in the slum, but all Annie can see is profanity. Left to his
own devices, Paul’s dream project is to write about himself and about nothing, to
produce untitled work for no one but himself. Not so different from Jack’s
book, Untitled triggers hysteria for Annie just as Jack’s plotless reams of self-referential
variations on a proverb trigger Wendy. Leaps, wiggles, and shuffles, the exuberant
gestures of McLuhan’s typophilia are allowed to Annie, Wendy, and many other women
at best only vicariously. In the novel, The Shining, Wendy earns money as a typist for
English professors while Jack pursues his dream of being a writer.[17] As for Annie, even
when she pretends to be an aspiring writer to explain the presence of a typewriter in her
house to the sheriff, she does so as a failure. Annie is a consumer of type. Annie’s status
as a serial killer is her one breakthrough into a male-dominated vocation, but the plight
of the serial killer vis-à-vis publishing is to rely on the journalists to author the story. The
serial killer is a maniacal scrapbooker, a collage artist, a clip-and-paste appropriator of
memories written by others. Annie’s only book is her Memory Lane scrapbook.

Misery’s typewriter winds up Paul’s accomplice in brutal acts orchestrated as poetic
justice. Paul postpones Annie’s murder-suicide pact by promising to finish the book in
order to bring Misery back to the world for good. He teases Annie with the prospect of
answering all the cliffhanger questions in Misery’s story, but then he refuses satisfaction,
not in the pleasurable manner of Scheherazade but as a definitive power reversal.
“Remember how for all those years nobody knew who Misery’s real father was, or if
they’d ever be reunited? It’s all here. Does she finally marry Ian or will it be Winthorne?
It’s all right here,” says Paul as he lights a match and sets fire to the pages he has
doused in lighter fluid. Misery’s Return suffers the same fate as Untitled. Annie lunges
toward the burning manuscript while Paul uses the opportunity to bludgeon her with
the typewriter. As the fight continues, Paul grabs the smoldering pages and shoves

95

them in her mouth. “You want it? Eat it!” In King’s novel, Paul yells, “Suck my book,” lest
there be any doubt that this is an act of oral rape by text. Annie fights back but trips
over Paul’s leg and falls headfirst—“ding”—onto the typewriter. A couple more blows to
the head with an iron pig and Annie is dead.

“To save time is to lengthen life,” says the proverb adopted for the Remington
typewriter seal. Typewriting thus imagined represents a promise to stave off death. And
in a way, the typewriters in Misery and The Shining do just that: they forestall death for
as long as the typing continues. Instead of looking at type through the narrative of
progress, films such as Misery and The Shining allow us to sit uncomfortably with type
that refuses narrative and with typewriters that record paralysis as much as they free the
hand from it. Annie Wilkes is as much a victim of pen paralysis as she is a victim of the
typewriter. Jack Torrance is more an explicator of type than an author. Typewriter horror
allows the machine to help and to hinder, to function and to malfunction, to move
fluidly between gender stereotypes, and finally to be more than a mechanical servant. A
Royal 10 typewriter ad with a speech bubble coming out of the platen best expresses
the sentiment of horror’s typewriter: “I’ll talk for myself.”

Notes:
[1] King, Misery, 226.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Sholes and Glidden.
[4] On the lower end of the pen spectrum, the 2012 introduction of BIC “For Her” pens
was as telling as it was ill advised.
[5] Journal of the United States Artillery, vol. 43, 1915, advertising section, vii.
[6] Kittler, 184.
[7] From US census data cited in Davies, 10.
[8] Lupton, 43.
[9] See Davies, 55–56.

96

[10] Ibid., 55.
[11] Herkimer County Historical Society, frontispiece.
[12] Kittler, 187.
[13] Ibid., 206.
[14] See Polt for wonderfully defamiliarizing alternatives to the canonical machine.
[15] See McLuhan, 230.
[16] Ibid.
[17] See King, The Shining, 53.

Works Cited:
Davies, Margery W. Woman’s Place Is at the Typewriter: Office Work and Office Workers,

1870-1930. Temple University Press, 1982.
Herkimer County Historical Society, The Story of The Typewriter, 1873-1923. Andrew H.

Kellogg Company, 1923.
King, Stephen. Misery. Viking, 1987.
—. The Shining. Pocket Books, 1977.
Kittler, Friedrich A. Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. Translated, with an Introduction by

Geoffrey Winthrope-Young and Michael Wutz. Stanford University Press, 1999.
Lupton, Deborah. “‘Precious Cargo’: Foetal Subjects, Risk and Reproductive
Citizenship.” Critical Public Health, vol. 22, no. 3, 2012, pp. 329-40.
McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New American Library,

1964.
Misery. Directed by Rob Reiner, Columbia Pictures, 1990.
Polt, Richard. “Typology: A Phenomenology of Early Typewriters.” The Classic Typewriter

Page.
Sholes & Glidden. The Sholes & Glidden Type-Writer. George and Martin, 1874

97

MISERY CHASTAIN CANNOT BE
DEAD: ANNIE WILKES AND FAN

REJECTION OF CHARACTER
D E AT H

Taylor Hughes

It is the middle of the night. Annie Wilkes has waited and waited for the latest
installment of her favorite series. She goes to the bookstore to be sure she gets the first
copy. She devours it as quickly as possible, curling up in the armchair we later glimpse
in her bedroom, reading long into the night–only to discover that Misery, her favorite
character, has tragically died. She rushes downstairs, where she conveniently holds the
author captive, to lament: “Misery Chastain cannot be dead!” she wails. “You did it! You
murdered my Misery!”

Many of us know too
well the feeling of
being excited for the
latest installment of
our latest fictional
pleasure, only to be
devastated when we
find death waiting for
our “faves.” Annie is
not alone in her grief or anger over a fictional character’s demise. Most people
remember the lasting trauma of their first fictional loss. Whether it was eagerly following
the Harry Potter series as children, or being shocked by the infamous “Red Wedding”
in Game of Thrones (or the many, many other character deaths on that show), everyone
who enjoys fiction has been hurt when a character they loved met a too-early death.

98

Arguably the first example of an outpouring of fan grief was in 1893 when Arthur Conan
Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes in The Final Problem. Like Paul Sheldon, Doyle felt
trapped by his most beloved character’s fame and wanted to be a more “commanding”
voice in literature.[1] So he killed Sherlock. Fans were not pleased. According to legend,
the public canceled subscriptions to the magazine en masse, wore black armbands in
mourning, and started “Let’s Keep Holmes Alive” clubs. Paul Sheldon is more
remorseful than Doyle was; when Annie accuses him of murdering Misery, he deflects,
insisting, “no one murdered her, she just died.” Doyle referred to the death of Holmes as
“justifiable homicide.“[2]

But, as Annie would “convince” Paul to continue writing his Misery series, the fans won
out over Doyle’s desire for Holmes’s death. He was brought back for 1901’s The Hound
of the Baskervilles, a story set before The Final Problem, then resurrected in 1903’s The
Empty House. The mourning could end. Of course, this was only the first example of
fans coming together to grieve and band together to collectively rescue a character.
With the internet at their disposal, modern-day fans create digital memorials for their
favorite characters on forums or sites like Livejournal, Tumblr, and Twitter, but this
phenomenon can even transcend the internet. After fan-favorite character Ianto Jones

was killed off the Doctor
Who-spinoff Torchwood,
fans created an extensive
shrine in Cardiff.

It became something of a
pilgrimage site for fans
who continued to add
photos and messages of
support. Though these
characters are not real,

Figure 1 The Ianto Jones shrine in 2012.

99