CHARACTER ANALYSIS

          
 1- ANNIE WILKES:    
      Annie Marie Wilkes Dugan is one of the main characters in Misery by Stephen King. She is a 48-49 year old woman who lives in Colorado alone, also owns farming land and animals. She is the biggest fan of her favourite author, Paul Sheldon. The novel tells about Annie's background in pages 42, 43, 44, 45. She was born in Bakersfield, California on 1 April 1943. She graduated as a nurse from California's nursing school. She had got a job at St Joseph's Hospital in Pennsylvania. Then she moved from hospital to hospital and murdered lots of ill and old people. Then she married to a man called Ralph Dugan who was a doctor, but they divorced. After the divorce, she began to murder lots of babies. She was arrested and called Dragon Lady.




 
          She is a large, strong, middle-aged woman and not feminine in manner at all. Her hair is like some battered helmet. She has got short, oily, un-styled dark hair. She is plump. Her skin is wrinkled and covered with wounds as it says in the book: "The flesh on her face seemed to hang as loosely as the clothes on her body. Her eyes were blank. There were red marks on her arms and, hands...(page 38)" She wears large cardigans that hide her shape and wool skirts in dull coloures. She never wears make-up.

         On her first appearance she appears as the 'mothering' type, because she talked with soft voice and smiled. But then she revealed her real character; a schizophrenic, obsessed woman. The narrator tells us about it in early pages " Annie Wilkes occasionaly lost her centre. For periods of time which could last only a few seconds or longer, there was nothing solid in her...At first Paul was only aware that something was wrong with her." She hides her malice behind a cherry facade.

       She is cunning. She expresses her anger with strange childish words like "dirty bird" or "mister clever man". She is brutal. For example in these sentences you can see how barbaric she is: "She closed one of her strong hands around the rat and began to squeeze. The rat struggled and whipped its tail from side to side... Paul heard the rat's bones break and blood ran out of its mouth... 'Now it's at peace.' she said and laughed." She loves torturing and killing everyone. She has long days with depression. In these days she goes her "Laughing Place".

     To sum up she is a middle-aged, mentally ill woman who is torturing and forcing Paul to write a new Misery novel.