Annie Wilkes

Lore & Background

The novel provides Wilkes' backstory, stating that she was born in Bakersfield, California (this detail is from the film adaptation; the novel does not specify her birthplace), and graduated from the University of Southern California's nursing school. After several years of working in hospitals across the country, she settled in a remote portion of Colorado's Western Slope. In both the book and film, Wilkes rescues protagonist Paul Sheldon after he breaks both of his legs in a car accident (in the novel, Sheldon breaks his own legs in the accident; Wilkes rescues him but does not cause the breaks), and takes him to her home to convalesce. She fawns over Sheldon, a writer of romance novels starring her favorite literary character, Misery Chastain; she professes to be his "number one fan" and says that she loves him. She also implies that she has visited the hotel where Sheldon finishes his novels as he was staying there. These statements, and the fact that she is not in a hurry to take him to a hospital, make Sheldon uneasy. He has studied psychological disorders as part of his research for the Misery series, and suspects early on that Wilkes is mentally unstable. Wilkes is furious upon discovering Sheldon killed off Misery in his latest novel. She tells him she has not called a hospital or told anybody about him and makes a veiled threat on his life. She holds him captive in her home and subjects him to a series of physical and psychological tortures. She also forces him to burn the only copy of a novel he felt would put him back on track as a mainstream author, and then makes him write a new novel bringing Misery back to life. Sheldon writes the book as Wilkes wants, but bridles at her treatment. Using his wheelchair, he sneaks out of his room several times while Wilkes is away. On one of his trips out of his room, Sheldon finds Wilkes' old scrapbook and learns from the newspaper clippings that she is a serial killer whose spree dates back to her childhood in Bakersfield. Among her victims were a neighboring family, her own father, her college roommate, and a hitchhiker with whom she had a brief fling. Sheldon also learns that she killed several patients at other hospitals where she worked, but no one suspected foul play because the victims were either elderly or gravely injured. However, while serving as a nurse in the maternity ward at a hospital in Bould

In Their Own Story

The smell of antiseptic mixed with stale coffee hangs heavy in the small kitchen. Annie hums a tuneless lullaby as she stirs a pot of thick stew, her back turned to the man bound to the bed. She speaks softly about his recovery, praising his resilience while casually mentioning the book he must rewrite. The air grows cold when she turns around, her eyes wide with an unsettling intensity that promises pain if he hesitates. Outside, the wind howls through the pines, but inside, the only sound is the ticking clock and the soft click of a syringe being prepared.

Reader's Guide

King characterizes Annie Wilkes as a cunning, brutal and devious woman who hides her malice behind a cheery façade. Both the novel and the film portray her as extremely paranoid, and also suggest that she may have borderline personality disorder. In the novel, she has day-long bouts with depression, during which she is seen maiming herself; Sheldon also finds evidence that she gorges herself on vast quantities of food. She has an unhealthy obsession with romance novels, particularly Sheldon's Misery series. She abhors profanity, to the point that she will fly into fits of rage if it is used in front of her. She instead expresses anger with distinctive minced oaths such as "cockadoodie" and "dirty bird." In the novel, however, she lets more conventional profanities slip on occasion. In both the book and the film adaptation, she calls Sheldon a "cocksucker" while threatening to kill him during the final fight scene. She has violent tantrums over insignificant matters. For instance, when Sheldon complains that the packet of Eaton's Corrasable Bond paper she bought for him is smudge-prone, she smashes his still-healing knee; in the book, when he mentions that her typewriter is missing a key, she cuts off his thumb. King has noted that Wilkes "may seem psychopathic to us, but it's important to remember that she seems perfectly sane and reasonable to herself – heroic, in fact, a beleaguered woman trying to survive in a hostile world filled with cockadoodie brats". In a special feature on the collectors' edition DVD, forensic psychologist Reid Meloy said that Wilkes' personality (as portrayed by Kathy Bates) is a virtual catalog of mental illness. According to Meloy, Wilkes has bipolar disorder, where someone can have manic psychoses as well as depressions. He also believes her profile is typical of people who stalk celebrities. In his commentary on the film available on the DVD, director Rob Reiner notes that Wilkes is loosely based on Genene Jones, a nurse who is believed to have killed as many as 50 children who were in her care over a two-year period.

Did You Know?

• Annie Wilkes was born in Bakersfield, California (this detail is from the film adaptation; the novel does not specify her birthplace), and graduated from the University of Southern California's nursing school.