Essay Five Ideas

I have a few different ideas for essay number five, the character analysis essay. The first of my two ideas is to compare the points of view presented by Annie and Paul in Stephen King’s novel Misery. Their conflicting viewpoints have one thing in common. Paul thinks (and I agree) that Annie is insane. On the other hand, Annie thinks that she is the only one that can be right and that Paul is insane. The comparison of their viewpoints would prove to be an interesting insight into the effects of a person’s upraising. For my second thought, I considered simply breaking down Annie’s character. The problem presented with this idea is trying to explain why Annie chooses to do what she does. There are many possibilities, but it is impossible to know exactly what King’s reasoning was for writing Annie’s character the way he did. He could have reasoned that she was abused as a child or that she is a psychopath or for any number of reasons. Another idea that crossed my mind was to compare Paul’s character to Catherine Bradbury’s character in “The House on Maple Street”. Whether mentally, physically, or both, Paul and Catherine were both placed in an abusive situation that made escape seem impossible. The difference between these two characters is that Paul builds up the strength to force himself out of the situation. Catherine chose not to defend herself and to give into the hopelessness of the situation in which she was placed. This idea would turn into a paper discussing how much suffering a person must go through in order to turn their doubts and fears into anger and hope. It would also point out how loss and depression can offset a person’s well being and their ability to defend themselves when needed. All in all I do plan on using at least one of the characters from Misery to be analyzed in this essay.