Misery: Challenging Gender Stereotype Misery is the most thematically satisfying of all Stephen King’s novels. The theme this paper will explore further is that of King’s disturbing interpretation of gender roles. Gender stereotypes are what is thought of as societal norms dictating types of behaviour based on whether a person is a male or female. In popular literature gender stereotypes often see women as good, pure and innocent, whereas men are seen as strong and at times the evil beings, most often being the villain. King implies in Misery that having or taking control of others is a woman’s quality while weakness and passiveness is a man’s quality, therefore challenging the way in which the reader can related to its characters. …show more content…
King uses these descriptions but challenges them with the female character of Annie Wilkes, even down to the description of lumpy and “…seemed to have no feminine curves at all…” (p.7). Annie is a recluse, living far away from town on a farm, where she spends her days “feeding the animals, cleaning the stalls…” (p.24). Dirty jobs that are usually associated with men’s work. She appears throughout the novel to not only have the strength: “it was a struggle getting you to the truck, but I’m a big woman…” (p.14), but the aggressiveness seen by Paul as “she stabled him with it half a dozen times” (p.242) and felt by Paul when “she rushed across the room at him, thick legs pumping…it was like to tread of Goliath striding into the Valley of Bones” and “brought her fist down on the bunched salt-dome that had been Paul Sheldon’s left knee” (p.69). King characterizes Annie as cunning, brutal and devious, with a paranoid and obsessive mind, who often has moments of mental health breakdowns and violent mood swings. This is seen when she spills the soup and blames Paul for making her do it, then throwing the bowl against the wall. Annie, continues her anger towards Paul by making him drink the water from the wash bucket in order to take the medication she provides …show more content…
The final girl appears in most popular horror novels and films, has given power to many generations of women. She is often seen as the last woman standing, the sole survivor and the damsel in distress. The final girl is often chased or tortured but is a feisty character who gets the final battle with the villain. Does this sound like anyone? King has made Paul the new version of the final girl. As we’ve already covered, Paul was tortured by Annie throughout the novel, and although initially had no way to protect himself, he was secretly lifting his typewriter “…like some weird barbell…” (p.217) to gain physical strength. While “…another part of him, more calculating and less cowed, which reminded him that he could not play the part of Scheherazade if he grew frightened and placatory when ever she stormed” (p.64), reminding him to keep his mind strong. Paul did make an attempt to get help when he saw the Police car in Annie’s driveway by throwing an ashtray out the window, where King provided perfect imagery of Paul as the damsel in distress. And although further tortured for his actions, he keep “…thinking: I’m going to kill her” (p.44). In the end, as with most final girls, Paul believes himself to be victorious when he uses the very method to kill Annie that she used to kill the novel Fast Cars. Paul was able to control his pain, driven by what can only be described as
When he found out he had cancer his whole life changed. Throughout the book it talks about the changes he went through and his end of life journey. Paul is a lot like the character Mrs. Dubose from To Kill a Mockingbird, written by Harper Lee. Mrs. Dubose was an older lady going through the same sort of things that Paul was. They both have a lot of similarities while going through
Paul had received his uniform and officially was a War Eagle. Meanwhile during Paul's whole Middle School experience he wonders how he starred into a solar eclipse for an hour and blinded himself. Then one day he was behind the wall on a dirt path behind his house when Erik and Arthur pulled up and where as usual trying to scare Paul about causing a ruckus at Eriks senior night yet Paul wasn’t going to let Erik get to him this time and had confronted Erik about killing Luis Cruz brother of Theresa and Tino Cruz. Earlier in the
Seixm is the discrimination against someone based on their sex; this discrimination is usually directed toward females. Barbara Kingsolver uses her novel to spread social awareness. Not only does she speak heavily on sexism, but she speaks on Central American immigration and includes Native American characters. Kingsolver shows how hard it is to be a female in a male dominated world, as well as how hard it is to be in a minority group. In Barbara Kingsolver’s
Why do people make an initial judgement about a person they have only seen or heard about? Without any information at all, the brain formulates an answer to the question they were pondering: who is that person? One of our greatest sins is to place people into boxes, defining them into one shape, into one dimension. Stereotypes are a very predominant part of reality as well as fictional works. In the novels The Hangman’s Daughter and The Dark Monk , by Oliver Pötzsch, one of the most prevalent themes presented is the idea that people do not necessarily reflect what society expects from them, either because of their role or position within the community.
Around the same section, Erik says the name “Castor” which triggers a memory Paul had blocked for a long time, the truth behind his visual impairment and that Erik was at fault for it. This led to Paul accepting it was not his fault and he finally stopped blaming himself for it. In conclusion, Paul started off as a wimpy, fearful kid who ended up finding a lot about himself and turned out a strong, independent young man. He had an incredible arch of character development throughout the entire novel, with changes in himself and the outside of him.
Because of him losing everything, and now also hope, he gives up, and ready to give in. Although Paul fights long and hard in the war, at the end he is glad he is going to die, “ All quiet on the Western Front. He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come” (p. 296). This happens when all his friends are dead, and he is left in the war.
Women are strong, stronger than most men if you ask me, not necessarily physically, but emotionally, able to handle more pain. You don’t believe me? Here are a few examples: women carry around a baby for nine months, they work/walk in high heeled shoes for days on end, they are amazing multi taskers, struggling to live up to the standards that society has set up for them, how to look, how to act, who to marry, what job to have, and countless other representations. In the time period of To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, Scout, our main character and narrator, combats with wanting to be who she wants, a “do what I want” tomboy, while society tries to make her a nice southern lady. Scout commonly wrestles with feminism throughout the story.
Paul felt “strange and remarkable”. Then, he remembered the real truth about his eyes. Erik pushed Paul over his limit. Paul was mad enough to tell on Erik, finally standing up to him. Erik made horrible choices.
Throughout the book Paul becomes more confident with himself and does not care what other people thought about him. In the beginning of the book Paul was scared to move and go to a new school with no one he knew. He started to like school better by being the starting goalie and meeting some people.
In the popular play Macbeth, Shakespeare compares the gender stereotypes portrayed to those different pre-existing ideas from other generations such as the 1900’s, the 50’s, and even today 's society. Macbeth has plenty of examples of the exaggeration of gender roles that clearly differentiate male and female by construing their proper roles as polar opposite or complementary. Examples proving that there are gender stereotypes in Macbeth pertain to characters such as Lady Macbeth, The Witches, and Macbeth himself. In Macbeth, the many different stereotypes of gender roles from throughout the century to today’s society have been displayed in many aspects of the play. With examples of the exaggeration of gender constructs pertaining to the male
Paul experiences this deep sorrow and depression because he feels that he has been completely robbed of his sentiment. Furthermore, Paul feels that because of war’s ability to manipulate his feelings into becoming almost static, he has no choice but to have self control and bottle up his emotions. This emphasizes the fact that war causes pain by twisting a soldiers emotions so they fall into a deep despair and begin to crumble, until eventually they are left with nothing but a skeleton of what they once were. Moreover, In the same conversation with his mother, Paul wishes to be taken back in time so he can escape the anguish he currently feels: “Ah! Mother, Mother!
Annie Wilkes' "unique" point of view about the world around her effects her personality and Paul. The way that Annie seems to freeze up and become catatonic is one of the main reasons for the reader's and Paul's horror. On page 12 Paul describes the way Annie changes as such, "the black nothing of a crevasse folded into an alpine meadow, a blackness where no flowers grew." From that point on the narrator's fear of Annie escalated to a new level. Later on in the book, Annie becomes very casually terrifying, as if it were natural for her.
Paul’s reunion with his mother permits him to recognize the impacts war has had on his mind and life. In the seventh chapter, Paul receives 17 days of leave. During this time, he visits his mother as she suffers in ominous distress. After Paul witnesses his mother deteriorating, he aspires to “weep and be comforted too, indeed I am little more than a child” (Remarque 183). Paul feels little, if any, content with his life as a consequence of experiencing a plentiful
Gender differences take a big place in every story and can lead to some conflicts. According to Cliffsnotes,“Gender stereotypes are simplistic generalizations about the gender attributes “(Cliffsnotes 1). In other words, it exists some stereotypes that categorized people. In A streetcar named Desire written by Tennessee Williams, there is some conflictual situations based on gender differences between Mitch, Stanley, Stella and Blanche. Based on this idea, each character represents a specific type of gender stereotypes.
The role of women in literature crosses many broad spectrums in works of the past and present. Women are often portrayed as weak and feeble individuals that submit to the situations around them, but in many cases women are shown to be strong, independent individuals. This is a common theme that has appeared many times in literature. Across all literature, there is a common element that causes the suffering and pain of women. This catalyst, the thing that initiates the suffering of women, is essentially always in the form of a man.