So, what is the cause of nurse Annie’s mental breakdown from devoted fan to torturer? There are several clues in the novel to what can be diagnosed as schizophrenia. This mental ailment has long been confused with dissociative identity disorder, but it is important to note that a person with schizophrenia is not full of disparate personalities. In fact, there are many false ideas of what schizophrenia is and how it affects those diagnosed. In an article for Psychiatry Today, researchers came to the conclusion that “Schizophrenia is the most common illness used today as a metaphor in the media and routinely appears associated with crime and violence with no medical or scientific rigor, reinforcing the stigma against this disorder.”4 They pointed to the use of the word “schizophrenic” as used in metaphor to describe something crazy, absurd, or hard to understand. In fact, data suggests that when people hear that a violent attack by someone with schizophrenia has occurred, they distance themselves from others with the disorder.
Matthias Angermeyer and H. Matschinger were among the first to report a population study of the direct effects of media reports of violent incidents on public stigma in Germany. In this study, the reported incident involved a patient with schizophrenia who attacked prominent German politicians. A comparison of pre-incident and post-incident survey responses suggested a significant increase in the social distance of the public toward people with schizophrenia, as well as an increase in the public belief that patients with psychiatric conditions were “dangerous” and “unpredictable.”5
Socialite and dancer Zelda Fitzgerald, wife of famous author F. Scott Fitzgerald, was diagnosed with schizophrenia at age thirty.
So, what is schizophrenia, really? It is a mental illness characterized by bouts of psychosis. This psychosis manifests differently for everyone, though often comes in the form of hallucination, whether auditory or visual, as well as in the form of disorganized thoughts. With therapy and medication, those living with schizophrenia can improve greatly. Over the decades, doctors have come to understand it as more of an umbrella disease which other conditions fall under, like Schizoaffective Disorder, which is another likely candidate for Annie Wilkes. Why? Because those suffering from this disorder are known to have unstable moods. We’re sure Paul Sheldon would attest to that symptom, especially when she slices off both his foot and thumb!
Unfortunately, the stigma of mental illnesses often negatively affects those suffering. The truth is, it is debatable if schizophrenia and violence go hand in hand. It has been associated with higher incidents, yet many of those involve the use of drugs. Researchers urge us to be cautious when equating mental disorders to murder. “Public stigma is among the most salient barriers to the recovery of people with psychosis and often has negative psychological effects on both patients and their caregivers.” 6
While the cause of Annie’s psychotic violence is never specifically expressed, the most terrifying element in Misery is the reality of Annie’s complex and intense bond to Paul. Unlike paranormal monsters like Pennywise, she is all human, a mirror of what can become of a warped fan’s love gone too far. This is especially authentic for the author himself, as Stephen King was inspired to write Misery after many fans hankering for horror were less than pleased when King’s fantasy The Eyes of the Dragon was published in 1984. Stephen King, thankfully, has not been trapped in the clutches of Annie Wilkes.
Paul Sheldon wishes he were so lucky.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Tommyknockers
For an author as prolific as Stephen King, there naturally comes novels or stories that are not as well received as others. But in the case of The Tommyknockers, it is the author himself who is tough on the 1987 science-fiction novel. At the time that he created The Tommyknockers, King was suffering from a severe addiction to cocaine. Dependence on cocaine can cause extreme mood swings, paranoia, and moments of high energy. In 2014, Andy Greene of Rolling Stone asked King about that era in his life, asking “Did the quality of your writing start to go down?” King answered:
Yeah, it did. I mean, The Tommyknockers is an awful book. That was the last one I wrote before I cleaned up my act. And I’ve thought about it a lot lately and said to myself, ‘There’s really a good book in here, underneath all the sort of spurious energy that cocaine provides, and I ought to go back.’ The book is about seven hundred pages long, and I’m thinking, ‘there’s probably a good three-hundred-and-fifty-page novel in there.’1
Despite King’s harsh criticism of The Tommyknockers, many constant readers have found appeal in one of the author’s few sci-fi works. NBC produced a miniseries in 1993 starring Marg Helgenberger and Jimmy Smits. In 2018, writer and director James Wan (Saw [2004], The Conjuring [2013]) announced he was working on a film adaptation of The Tommyknockers.
Like most works of creativity, there were influences that helped carve the narrative of The Tommyknockers. Stephen King pointed to the 1927 H.P. Lovecraft story “The Colour Out of Space.” In the story, a meteorite is found that has caused every living thing in a local area to become deformed, or die. This meteorite stumps scientists, and eventually it is agreed that it must be alien in origin. This mirrors The Tommyknockers, in which Bobbi Anderson stumbles across a mysterious piece of metal in the dirt behind her home. As Bobbi digs up what we learn is a piece of an alien ship, the denizens of Haven, Maine, become exceedingly crazy, influenced much like the people in “The Colour Out of Space.” When he wrote the story, which became one of his most famous, H.P. Lovecraft pointed to his own inspirations. He mentioned the building of the Scituate Reservoir in Rhode Island, in which the town of Scituate was flooded, causing buildings to erode and a quarter of the population to move away.
One recent news development in the 1920s that was connected to “The Colour Out of Space” was the scathing truth about the Radium Girls written in the New York Times. The Radium Girls were a group of women, mostly young and of the lower-middle class, who were employed by the US Radium Corporation to paint clock dials with luminous paint. This paint was absolutely brimming with deadly radium, a substance that the women didn’t know was going to cause them to die painful, gruesome deaths. In a review for the book Radium Girls (2017) by Kate Moore, the ignorance of the effects of radium is on full display:
The workplace was considered a studio rather than a factory and provided better-than-average wages, as well as accommodated the luxury of openly conversing with other workers as long as each individual’s daily production did not suffer. As each woman’s level of proficiency and productivity increased, she became more valuable to the company, which resulted in wage increases; however, as the women soon learned, their achievements came with unbelievable consequences. Their employment brought various rewards as the girls and women delighted in the ability to purchase trendy clothes and, during evening socialization, received admiration from peers because their hair and clothing seemed to sparkle in the night: a direct result of the radium powder that permeated the air within the studios. Some of the young ladies delighted in the whimsical novelty of painting their fingernails or even their teeth with the paint.2