Misery

Annie Wilkes is the novel's antagonist. She is a middle-aged woman, a former nurse, who lives by herself on a remote farm in Colorado. She is Paul Sheldon's self-described "number-one fan" (6) though her fandom crosses the line into dangerous obsession. A largely symbolic character, she represents Dependency and Self-Actualization. By King's own admission, Annie is a metaphorical embodiment of addiction. Paul's relationship with Annie is the text's main avenue for exploring the theme of Confronting Addiction. She literally and figuratively entraps Paul. She gets him addicted to painkillers and injures him, keeping him confined to bed. She confines his creativity, forcing him to write a story to her specifications with serious consequences if he fails.

Annie grew up in Bakersfield, California but has lived in many places across the nation. She considers herself a proper woman who dislikes cussing, so she uses words such as "fiddle-de-foof" (75) and "cockadoodie" (79) instead. Annie is a plus-sized woman who dresses conservatively in the same gray cardigan and "endless succession of wool skirts" (8) each day. Despite her seemingly harmless appearance, Paul describes Annie as resembling an African idol. This racialized metaphor represents the enormous sense of fear and doom her presence evokes in Paul. Physically, Paul describes her as "solid" (8) and, in a way, impenetrable. These descriptors and the racialized metaphor present Annie as a larger-than-life, supernatural force in Paul's life, highlighting her role as a metaphor for addiction.

Annie displays "alternating periods of deep depression and almost aggressive cheerfulness and hilarity" (59). Paul spends the novel trying to navigate these mood changes and to avoid triggering them. These wild, unpredictable mood swings and violent outbursts symbolize Paul, and King's, relationship with drugs and alcohol.

Snooping through Annie's things, Paul finds a scrapbook full of newspaper articles about murders Annie's committed in the past, of family members, neighbors, and former patients, including infants. During her upswings, Annie treats Paul like a beloved child, fussing over him and telling him that she loves him. During her lows, she becomes almost catatonic, her eyes blank and her face expressionless "like lifeless dough" (175). Annie usually follows these lows with punitive acts of violence, such as cutting off Paul's left foot. Annie's final break with reality underscores the novel's themes of power and dependency, as her obsession with Paul and his work drives her to monstrous actions that end in her self-destruction.