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Part 3, Chapters 23-33
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Misery, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Addiction, Compulsion, and Obsession
Fiction, Reality, and Coping
Suffering, Justice, and the Human Condition
Control and Entrapment
Summary
Analysis
Paul writes until his hand is sore. Annie remarks that he is not just writing for her anymore, and, selfishly, Paul knows this is true. He dreams that Annie is turning into a gigantic bee. People show up to gawk at Annie’s house, prompting her to hang a chain across the driveway. Paul tells her he will finish the book tomorrow, which cheers her. She tells him she loves him, and she brings ice for his hand. The next day, Annie brings Paul medication and soup. Seeing the state of his hand, she bemoans not getting him another typewriter. Resolved, Paul will finish on the typewriter. Annie has a special treat for him: caviar. Paul laughs when he sees it. Surprisingly, Annie joins him.
Annie’s assessment is correct: Paul is just as obsessed with Misery’s Return as she is, and his compulsion to write also fuels his desire for survival. Dreaming of Annie turning into a bee aligns Paul’s thoughts of her with the plot of his novel, showing how closely those fixations are intertwined. The public’s obsession with Annie simultaneously victimizes her and indicates how close she is to being discovered. That Paul feels the need to finish his manuscript on the typewriter feels almost ceremonial, suggesting he views the machine as symbolic of his need to create. Annie and Paul’s shared laughter emphasizes the absurdity of their relationship.
Themes
Paul eats most of the caviar himself, thinking joyfully that he will kill Annie on a full stomach. She has also purchased expensive champagne for after he is finished. Paul asks her for one of his cigarettes, as he always smokes after finishing a book. Annie disapproves, but she agrees. At the novel’s end, Geoffrey considers the difference between cruel and insane gods, and he concludes he does not want to live if Misery dies. When she wakes, he knows he can survive, even without her love. Paul fills in the missing letters. As usual, he feels strangely empty, but it is good to be done. Annie has left him a cigarette and a single match. Paul wheels over to the loose baseboard to prepare for her arrival.
Paul’s enjoyment of the caviar is amplified by his secret revenge plot, so to some extent his happiness is a pretense. His request for a cigarette speaks to his sense of the importance of ritual in the creative process, building on his desire to finish the novel on the typewriter. Here, Geoffrey becomes Paul’s mouthpiece, alluding to Annie as an insane god whose rule Paul no longer wishes to submit to. Misery’s survival is Annie’s preferred ending, but it does not feel like Paul has written the novel this way to please her. Knowing that Paul’s revenge plot involves fire, the match Annie has trusted him with gains critical significance.
Themes
Paul calls for Annie, who excitedly goes to fetch the champagne. He calmly lights his single match. When Annie enters, Paul is sitting in his chair behind a heap of paper soaked in lighter fluid, bearing the title page “Misery’s Return.” Paul assures Annie she was right—it is the best Misery book. She drops the champagne in fear, pleading. Paul drops the match, igniting the pages. Annie howls and scoops the manuscript into her arms. Having anticipated this, Paul raises the heavy typewriter and slams it into her back, driving her to the floor.
Destroying his manuscript is the most effective way for Paul to hurt Annie, who does not fear death but is obsessed with finding out what happens to Misery. Denying her this knowledge is tantamount to torture. The manuscript also functions as a lure, drawing Annie close enough for Paul to enact physical violence on her in a last-ditch attempt at survival. That he uses the typewriter suggests he has triumphed over her mentally, reclaiming his artistic agency despite Annie’s attempt to control that most central part of him.
Themes
Paul stands over Annie on his right foot. She is burnt and bleeding from the champagne’s shattered glass. Paul throws himself on top of her, takes a handful of hot, charred paper, and shoves it into her mouth. He does this again and again, imagining he is enacting sexual violence on her. Annie throws Paul off. She hits her head on the mantel and collapses. Paul is halfway to his wheelchair when Annie opens her eyes. Horrified, Paul thinks that Annie really is an immortal goddess. She screams at him through her throatful of paper, grabbing at his legs as he crawls for the door. Her hands wrap around his throat. Paul screams for her to die, and she collapses again, on top of him.
Paul enacts all his pent-up rage on Annie, figuring it is the closest thing he will get to justice. The reference to sexual violence, while disturbing, calls back to the way Paul felt violated when Annie resuscitated him at the beginning of the novel. Annie’s apparent refusal to die momentarily confirms Paul’s suspicions that she is godlike and inescapable, amplifying his terror.
Themes
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Paul extricates himself from Annie’s body, not believing she is really dead. He locks her in his room and her grasping fingers appear in the crack of the door. Paul locks himself in the bathroom and takes three Novril before passing out. When he wakes, he is certain Annie is still alive, waiting for him with the axe. His vivid imagination hears a rustling outside. Unlike stories, life is messy, and plans imperfect. He meant to hit her in the head with the typewriter, killing her instantly. Cursing life’s uncertainties, Paul thinks of the real manuscript, hidden under his bed, which he intends to save. Summoning his courage, he resolves to try flagging down a car from outside the house.
Again, Annie seems to be unkillable, and by remaining alive she retains the ability to invoke terror in Paul’s psyche. The moment when Paul laments the messiness of real life as compared to fiction is somewhat metafictional, since he himself is a character in a work of fiction. Nevertheless, his point stands: if he had written the scene between him and Annie in a novel, Paul would have successfully killed her with the typewriter—a satisfying ending, because it is the very instrument she used to torture him. That Paul saved the actual manuscript of Misery’s Return highlights the strength of his obsession with his own creations.
Themes
Moving through the parlor, Paul sees Annie in her nurse’s uniform lurking in every shadow. He hears a car pulling up and throws Annie’s ceramic penguin through the window, calling for help. It is the same two cops who questioned Annie—David and Goliath, whose real names are Wicks and McKnight. The sight of Paul’s emaciated body horrifies them. He babbles to them, calling Annie a goddess and warning them she may still be alive. Paul listens as the men investigate the spare bedroom. When Wicks returns, Paul is relieved—Annie must be dead. But Wicks tells him there was no one in the room. Paul screams until he passes out.
Paul’s extensive trauma causes him to hallucinate visions of Annie throughout her house, highlighting how the effects of suffering can keep people trapped. Seeing Paul from the officers’ perspective emphasizes the physical and mental consequences of his ordeal. Even after help arrives, Paul is so accustomed to thinking of Annie as a goddess that he assumes she is still lying in wait somewhere, ready to strike. Her missing body seems to confirm these assumptions, and ends this portion of the novel on a suspenseful cliffhanger.
Themes
