Misery

Misery
by Stephen King

Misery is almost a straight-forward torture story. Paul Sheldon is held against his will and systematically abused, both physically and emotionally. The novel starts when he’s captured and ends when he’s freed. But the stories within the story are what separates this novel from routine gore and makes it something unique. Misery is one of my all time favorite Stephen King books.

Annie Wilkes is everything you want in a villain. She’s acutely insane, but manages to maintain well enough to believably escape detention in spite of a criminal career that spans decades and includes dozens of murders. The character was loosely inspired by real-life killer nurse Genene Jones, who was convicted of poisoning children with the intent of resuscitating them. But where her intentions were not explicitly murderous, Annie’s are. The catalog or horrors she inflicts on Sheldon are numerous, and her gradual descent as she stops trying to hide her real nature from Paul is one of the most compelling parts of the book.

Annie is, in many ways, a child. Her refusal to swear (and the ridiculous babble she concocts instead) is somehow scarier than any string of curses. She’s just as petulant as a child that doesn’t get her way, only with substantially more dire consequences. King does an excellent job of using her childish behavior to create tension. These small touches early in the novel let the reader know that something is deeply, deeply wrong.

Paul Sheldon becomes a bit of a psycho in his own right by the end of the novel. Partially because of addiction and partially just because of the brutal conditions, Paul starts to lose it after only a few chapters. This is the first book we’ve read this semester where the psychosis seems to be catching. By the time he’s finally found by the police, Paul can’t even string together a coherent sentence. Living with Annie’s insanity has eroded his own, to the point that he is no longer functional, even after rescued. The lingering effects of that paranoia and extreme fear in the final chapters feel real. It’s true that in many other types of story, the reader would never see Paul after he was rescued. His long convalescence is no happy ending. But it fits perfectly for the self-aware yarn on writing that King is spinning.

From a mechanical standpoint, the story is unique in several ways. Almost the entire novel takes place in a single room, with a single character, who is more often than not talking to himself. There’s a great deal of self awareness in this trick - King likely was also alone in a room somewhere when he composed it. He is writing about his own process for writing, his own ideas about what works and what doesn’t (and why). He manages to sneak a lot of his ideas about what is and isn’t good writing into the mouth of Paul Sheldon, and because of the story it doesn’t seem forced. 

It’s amazing that King is able to accomplish so much without losing the story. At the end of the day, it’s still a book about a man who is being tortured. Misery is a very complex book, and those layers are what makes it a fan favorite.