Beginning of Essay
What does it take to frighten an author of best-selling horror novels? In Misery, Stephen King embodies a writer's fears about himself as a writer and about the continuation of his creativity in a richly elaborated and horrifi-cally psychotic woman, Annie Wilkes. ....

Middle of Essay
.... on her and an ""expression of maternal love" (King 159) with his addiction to pain killing-drugs. Annie's disciplinary actions contribute to her mother figure, also. Gottschalk writes, "When he has been bad, she disciplines him but in motherly fashion often comforts him while doing so" (127). Annie punishes Sheldon's attempts to get free by ampu-tating his foot and thumb with an ax, "exercising editorial authority over his body" (King 264). Annie acts as a virginal and protective mother of the vir-gin Misery, "Annie prevents Paul from letting Misery Chastain die in child-birth. She must live and a novel must be born" (Gottschalk 126). ....