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Gerald's Game

Gerald's Game is a 1992 suspense novel by American author Stephen King.^[1] The story follows Jessie Burlingame, whose husband Gerald handcuffs her to the bedposts of their remote Maine cabin during a sexual game intended to revitalize their marriage, only for Gerald to suffer a fatal heart attack after she kicks him in resistance.^[1]^[2] Left alone and immobilized, Jessie faces dehydration, hallucinations, and a stray dog while grappling with repressed memories of childhood trauma, ultimately resorting to self-mutilation to escape.^[1] Published by Viking Press, the novel shares a solar eclipse backdrop with King's concurrent work Dolores Claiborne, highlighting themes of female endurance against physical and psychological torment.^[2] In 2017, it was adapted into a Netflix film directed by Mike Flanagan, starring Carla Gugino as Jessie, which amplified the book's exploration of survival and buried abuse through visual intensity.^[3] The work exemplifies King's shift toward character-driven psychological horror, eschewing supernatural elements for raw human vulnerability and causal consequences of personal history.^[1]

Development and Publication

Conception and Writing Process

Stephen King conceived Gerald's Game around the central premise of a woman handcuffed to a bed following her husband's sudden death during an attempted sexual game, drawing inspiration from confined-space narratives in his earlier works such as Cujo (1981), where characters were trapped in a car with a rabid dog, but shifting focus to a solitary female protagonist's psychological ordeal.^[4] This setup allowed King to explore themes of isolation and inner resilience through extended internal monologue, which he described as the novel's most introspective effort, terming it the "innie-est of all the innie books" centered on one character's mind in a single bedroom.^[5] The book emerged during King's post-addiction recovery phase in the early 1990s, a period marked by more character-driven and psychologically probing stories, with composition likely occurring in 1991 ahead of its 1992 publication.^[4] King investigated real-world elements of bondage and sadomasochism, viewing them through a lens of power dynamics and control, which he found reminiscent of Victorian-era sensationalism, ultimately incorporating subplots involving repressed trauma to deepen the protagonist's mental fragmentation.^[4] Compositional challenges included maintaining narrative momentum in a static, single-location setting reliant on hallucinations, flashbacks, and fragmented self-dialogue rather than external action. To ensure causal plausibility in survival mechanics, King physically tested an initial escape concept by restraining his son Joe to a bed with scarves, discovering the gymnast-like maneuver unfeasible and revising the sequence for grounded realism.^[5] This hands-on approach underscored his method of prioritizing practical verification over implausible invention, adapting the plot to align with verifiable physical limits.^[5]

Initial Release and Editions

Gerald's Game was first published in hardcover by Viking Press in 1992, with the edition identified by the statement "First published in 1992 by Viking Penguin" on the copyright page.^[6]^[7] The novel quickly achieved commercial success, reaching number one on the New York Times Adult Hardcover Best Seller list on July 19, 1992.^[8] In the United Kingdom, the book was released by Hodder & Stoughton, with subsequent paperback editions appearing there as well.^[9] A mass-market paperback edition followed in 1993 from Signet, expanding accessibility beyond the initial hardcover format.^[10] Digital editions, including eBooks, were later issued by publishers such as Simon & Schuster, reflecting the broader adoption of electronic formats in the post-2010 era.^[11] No substantive revisions to the text have been documented across these formats.

Narrative Elements

Plot Summary

Jessie Burlingame and her husband Gerald, a lawyer, drive to their isolated cabin on Lake Kashwakamak in western Maine for a late-summer weekend getaway aimed at revitalizing their stagnant marriage through sexual experimentation.^[12]^[13] Once there, Gerald proposes a bondage scenario, handcuffing Jessie's wrists to opposite bedposts using rigid police handcuffs while she wears only a thin silk nightgown, simulating a rape fantasy despite her reservations.^[12]^[14] After inhaling amyl nitrite from a small bottle to heighten arousal, Gerald collapses on the floor from a massive heart attack and dies, leaving Jessie immobilized with the handcuff keys just out of reach in his discarded pants pocket.^[15] Unable to free herself or attract distant help from the remote location, Jessie endures escalating dehydration, hunger, and physical agony over the ensuing days, her shouts echoing unanswered in the empty woods.^[15] A large stray dog enters the unlocked cabin on the second day, drawn to the scent of Gerald's decaying body, and begins gnawing on his protruding arm and hand, forcing Jessie to hurl and shatter a drinking glass from the bedside table to repel it, scattering sharp shards across the mattress.^[15] Delirium sets in, manifesting as auditory and visual hallucinations: the corpse of Gerald rises to berate and counsel her, while an inner voice resembling her twelve-year-old self—whom she calls "Gooseberry"—urges resilience and confronts suppressed guilt.^[16] Interwoven with these visions are involuntary flashbacks to Jessie's adolescence, particularly a family outing in 1963 to view a total solar eclipse, during which her father, Tom Mahout, sexually molested her on a blanket while the adults were entranced by the event, extracting a promise of secrecy that buried the trauma deep in her psyche.^[16] On the third day, a skeletal intruder—a disheveled man later identified as a local grave-robber—enters the cabin, rifles through Gerald's remains for rings and other "treasures," and departs without noticing or aiding the barely conscious Jessie.^[15] Drawing on fragments of hallucinated advice and raw desperation, Jessie selects a jagged shard from the broken glass and methodically slices into the flesh of her left wrist, severing skin, muscle, and tendons to shrink the hand enough to wrench it free from the unyielding cuff, resulting in profuse bleeding and near-fatal shock.^[15] She frees her other hand by unlocking the cuff with the retrieved key, bandages the mangled wound with torn bedsheets, forces herself to consume remnants of Gerald's uneaten steak to stave off collapse, and stumbles outside to start their vehicle despite her injuries.^[13] Driving erratically to the nearest hospital approximately thirty miles away, Jessie survives emergency surgery on September 15, 1992, and begins psychological reckoning with her unearthed memories, marking the ordeal's harrowing conclusion.^[15]

Characters

Jessie Burlingame, the novel's protagonist, emerges as a figure of endurance and adaptive cunning, leveraging physical remnants in her isolated environment and fragmented recollections to navigate dehydration, injury, and isolation over a period exceeding 24 hours.^[17] Her traits include intellectual acuity and a propensity for suppression of distress, enabling her to dissect problems methodically amid escalating physiological strain.^[17] ^[18] Gerald Burlingame, Jessie's spouse and a corporate attorney, embodies assertive entitlement in relational dynamics, initiating a restraint-based sexual scenario intended to counter marital stagnation but abruptly terminating due to cardiac arrest.^[19] ^[18] His limited on-page presence catalyzes the ensuing ordeal, rooted in patterns of unilateral decision-making that expose underlying asymmetries in their partnership.^[19] Manifestations within Jessie's perceptions include internalized personas voicing rational detachment, visceral terror, and residual vulnerability—collectively functioning as extensions of her cognitive processing under duress—and an external interloper, Raymond Andrew Joubert, whose nocturnal approach introduces tangible peril tied to opportunistic predation.^[18] These elements amplify the interplay between subjective projections and verifiable hazards, with Joubert's actions confirming a pattern of grave desecration documented in regional records.^[18]

Themes and Motifs

The novel portrays human survival as contingent on self-reliance amid severe physiological constraints, such as dehydration leading to hallucinations after approximately 48 hours without water and substantial blood loss from self-inflicted wounds exacerbating hypovolemic shock.^[20] This depiction draws on empirical limits of the body—e.g., the average adult can survive three days without fluids before organ failure risks escalate—contrasting dependency on external aid with internal resourcefulness, though some analyses critique the resolution as straining plausibility given documented cases where immobility and injury typically necessitate rapid medical intervention.^[21]^[14] Central motifs involve repressed childhood trauma surfacing through dissociation, a psychological defense mechanism where the mind fragments to cope with overwhelming events like sexual abuse, aligning with clinical observations of delayed traumatic reactions in Freudian terms.^[22] However, the narrative's emphasis on recovered memories echoes 1990s debates in psychology, where techniques to unearth such recollections faced scrutiny for potentially inducing false memories via suggestion, prioritizing adult agency and choices over deterministic childhood causality as the primary driver of later dysfunction.^[23]^[24] Marital gender dynamics emerge through consensual yet risky power exchanges that unravel catastrophically, illustrating mutual complicity in relational imbalances rather than unilateral male oppression, as both partners' decisions—e.g., initiating boundary-pushing games—contribute to the ensuing peril without excusing underlying abuses of authority.^[25] This unflinching view challenges idealized narratives by highlighting how spousal faults, including infidelity suspicions and unaddressed resentments, erode trust organically, grounded in causal realism over victim-perpetrator binaries.^[26]^[27]

Reception of the Novel

Critical Reviews

Gerald's Game elicited mixed critical responses upon its 1992 release, with reviewers praising its innovative claustrophobic premise and psychological intensity while critiquing structural flaws, implausibilities, and thematic excesses. The novel's single-location setup, centering on protagonist Jessie Burlingame's ordeal handcuffed to a bed after her husband's fatal heart attack, was lauded for generating sustained tension and internal horror without supernatural elements, marking a departure from King's typical fare.^[28]^[29] Kirkus Reviews described it as an "exquisitely horrifying frightfest" featuring "tightly controlled writing" and a "heartbreakingly brave heroine," emphasizing the raw physical and mental torment, including encounters with a feral dog and hallucinatory "guilt-gargoyles" from past trauma.^[28] Publishers Weekly echoed this by calling it one of King's "best-written stories," particularly in the initial character study of Jessie amid tragicomic elements.^[30] The Washington Post highlighted the premise's freshness, blending terror, black humor, and lyrical insights into personal "monsters," trapping readers in a "wild night" of suspense.^[29] However, detractors pointed to pacing issues in extended flashbacks, an unsatisfying anticlimax, and questionable plausibility, such as Jessie's escape method using a makeshift lubricant.^[28] The New York Times review by Michiko Kakutani faulted the "reductionist psychologizing" and overdetermined associations tying current events to childhood abuse, viewing the victimization motif as emblematic of broader cultural obsessions rather than deep causal insight.^[31] Publishers Weekly further criticized "sheer bad taste" in salacious incest depictions and a "lame wrap-up," rendering the work surprisingly exploitative.^[30] Despite these literary reservations, the book achieved commercial success, reaching the New York Times bestseller list with strong sales driven by King's fanbase.^[32]

Reader Responses and Criticisms

Despite achieving commercial success as a number one New York Times bestseller upon its 1992 release, Gerald's Game elicited polarized responses from readers, with many praising its intense psychological depth while others expressed discomfort over its graphic depictions of self-mutilation and implied childhood sexual abuse.^[33] Aggregate reader ratings on platforms like Goodreads average 3.6 out of 5 from over 176,000 reviews, reflecting broad appeal tempered by contention over the novel's unflinching realism in portraying human vulnerability and trauma.^[34] Forum discussions among King's fanbase highlight unease with the story's visceral elements, such as protagonist Jessie's desperate act of breaking her own wrist to escape handcuffs, which some readers described as excessively gory and psychologically taxing without supernatural relief.^[35] Early reader accounts from the 1990s onward noted the narrative's challenge in confronting personal accountability for engaging in consensual yet hazardous adult role-playing, where Gerald's fatal heart attack during a simulated rape scenario underscores causal risks of such games rather than external victimhood narratives prevalent in some contemporary discourse.^[36] Debates on the novel's conclusion center on Jessie's improbable survival after days of dehydration, exposure, and severe injury, with some lauding it as an empowering triumph of willpower and resourcefulness against physiological limits, while others critiqued its plausibility given empirical constraints on human endurance—such as blood loss and starvation—arguing it strains credulity beyond first-hand survival case studies.^[34] These views align with broader reader scrutiny of King's handling of trauma recovery, where Jessie's confrontation with repressed memories emphasizes individual agency over systemic excuses, though detractors found the resolution rushed or anticlimactic compared to the buildup's claustrophobic tension.^[36] Overall, the novel's grassroots reception underscores its role in King's oeuvre as a polarizing exploration of inner demons, appealing to those valuing raw causal realism over sanitized portrayals of adversity.

Film Adaptation

Production Background

Mike Flanagan directed the 2017 Netflix film adaptation of Gerald's Game, co-writing the screenplay with Jeff Howard to emphasize the novel's psychological intensity despite its reputation as "unfilmable" due to the protagonist's confinement and internal narrative. Flanagan acquired the adaptation rights in 2014 via his production company, Intrepid Pictures, which financed development and pitched the project at the Cannes Film Festival to secure Netflix distribution.^[37] Stephen King endorsed the approach for its fidelity to the story's mental and emotional core, influencing creative decisions like visualizing hallucinations through practical methods rather than heavy CGI to ground the surreal elements in tactile realism.^[38] Casting centered on actors capable of sustaining the film's limited-space demands; Carla Gugino was selected for Jessie Burlingame after auditioning in the handcuffed position to demonstrate endurance for extended scenes requiring physical restraint and vulnerability, while Bruce Greenwood portrayed Gerald, a role King personally recommended based on Greenwood's prior work.^[39]^[40] Supporting roles, including Henry Thomas and Chiara Aurelia for flashbacks, were chosen to evoke temporal shifts without disrupting the central isolation.^[41] Filming occurred primarily in Mobile and Fairhope, Alabama, from late 2016, replicating the novel's remote lake house with a single-bedroom set at the Mobile Civic Center to constrain action and heighten claustrophobia, mirroring the source material's logistical challenges.^[42]^[43] Techniques included long takes, split-screen for dual perspectives, and on-set prosthetics for injury sequences to prioritize authenticity over post-production effects, allowing Gugino's performance to drive the tension through improvisation within the rigged handcuff apparatus.^[44] This low-resource strategy, informed by Flanagan's prior indie horror projects like Oculus, enabled efficient production while tackling the adaptation's core hurdle of externalizing a mostly immobile, introspective ordeal.^[45]

Key Differences from the Novel

The 2017 film adaptation externalizes the novel's extensive internal monologues through hallucinatory manifestations primarily of Gerald and a younger Jessie, condensing the book's multiple voices—such as those of Jessie's college roommate Ruth Neary, her psychiatrist Nora Callighan, and historical figure Goodwife—into fewer entities to facilitate visual storytelling and maintain narrative focus on the central marriage dynamic.^[46]^[38] This streamlining accommodates the film's 103-minute runtime and cinematic pacing requirements, which demand observable conflict over prolonged subjective introspection, though it omits deeper explorations of ancillary motifs like extended mental dialogues that enrich the novel's psychological layering.^[38] In the ending, the film alters Jessie's post-escape confrontation with the abuser figure, known as the "Moonlight Man" (Raymond Andrew Joubert in the book), by depicting him as a more symbolic embodiment of systemic male predation rather than a singular real-world murderer, and replaces her novel act of spitting in his face during a courtroom encounter with a less aggressive resolution emphasizing internal triumph.^[47]^[38] Additionally, Jessie writes a letter to her younger self in the film to underscore personal healing from childhood trauma, diverging from the book's letter to Ruth detailing the abuser's crimes, including a 1992-specific cultural reference omitted for contemporary relevance; these shifts prioritize metaphorical closure suited to visual media, potentially diluting the novel's evidentiary coda that affirms the hallucination's partial reality through external proofs like footprints.^[46]^[47] The film introduces Gerald's use of Viagra during the bondage scenario, absent from the 1992 novel predating the drug's 1998 approval, to heighten physiological tension and imply its role in precipitating his heart attack alongside Jessie's resistance—depicted as a lip bite rather than the book's kick causing a head wound—reflecting an update for modern medical causality while amplifying the scene's immediacy for screen dynamics.^[46]^[48] To convey the realism of Jessie's self-inflicted injury for escape, the film employs practical effects including prosthetics designed by makeup artist Bob Kurtzman for the hand-degloving sequence, shifting from the novel's introspective focus on pain and dehydration to tangible visual horror that aligns with cinematic survival mechanics, where observable physical degradation drives tension more directly than descriptive prose.^[49]^[46]

Critical and Audience Reception

The film adaptation of Gerald's Game garnered predominantly positive reviews from critics, achieving a 91% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 81 reviews.^[50] Carla Gugino's performance as Jessie Burlingame was widely acclaimed as a tour-de-force, with reviewers commending her for blending panic, rage, resentment, and flashes of humor while sustaining the film's emotional and physical intensity in a role confined mostly to one location.^[51] Mike Flanagan's direction was praised for building suspense through long takes, sparse scoring, and claustrophobic cinematography, evoking Hitchcockian dread and making effective use of the single-setting premise to heighten terror.^[52] The film holds a Metacritic score of 79 out of 100, indicating generally favorable reception.^[53] Criticisms focused on the ending, described as atrocious and overly literal in its symbolism, a persistent issue in King's works that some felt undermined the buildup's psychological nuance.^[52] Others noted an over-reliance on trauma-revelation tropes, with the adaptation's visualization of internal monologues occasionally simplifying the novel's introspective depth and risking heavy-handedness in addressing repression and abuse.^[54] In April 2024, Gugino reflected that starring in the film represented a substantial career gamble, as the role's demands— including prolonged immobilization and raw vulnerability—highlighted broader industry hesitance toward bold, unflinching female survival narratives.^[55] Audience response was solid but more divided, reflected in an IMDb average rating of 6.5 out of 10 from 139,147 users as of October 2025.^[41] The Netflix release drove significant viewership, with viewers lauding its gripping tension and Gugino's raw portrayal, though discussions often centered on the eclipse flashback's harrowing realism in depicting childhood abuse versus perceptions of exploitative shock value.^[56]

Legacy and Influence

Impact on Horror Literature

Gerald's Game, published on September 15, 1992, exemplified a shift in horror literature toward psychological realism, relying on the protagonist's internal monologue and trauma-induced hallucinations rather than external supernatural threats for much of its tension. This approach intensified the genre's exploration of mental confinement, building on King's prior limited-location narratives like Misery (1987) by reducing the cast to effectively one active character, thereby amplifying isolation's dread through fragmented psyche and memory.^[57] The novel's emphasis on realistic human vulnerabilities—such as repressed abuse and survival instinct—highlighted horror's capacity to derive from "no monsters but the mind," a technique that underscored causal links between past events and present terror without fantastical intervention.^[14] By achieving commercial success as a New York Times bestseller despite its experimental minimalism, Gerald's Game validated the viability of non-supernatural horror in mainstream publishing, countering genre biases favoring spectacle over introspection during the early 1990s. This contributed to a broader evolution in horror, where King's post-sobriety output in the decade increasingly prioritized psychological depth, influencing the subgenre's maturation toward character-driven narratives amid a saturated market of supernatural tropes.^[58] The work's structure, centered on endurance against physical and emotional decay, prefigured heightened focus on trauma mechanics in subsequent psychological thrillers, demonstrating that empirical human limits could sustain genre suspense without otherworldly elements.^[59]

Modern Reassessments

In 2024 analyses, Gerald's Game continues to be reevaluated for its raw psychological intensity, with critics affirming the story's disturbance through unflinching examinations of trauma's long-term impacts rather than exaggerated narratives of perpetual helplessness. The film's portrayal of generational abuse, revealed via Jessie's flashbacks, underscores causal links between unaddressed childhood violations and adult maladaptive patterns, without endorsing deterministic excuses that overlook individual volition.^[60] Carla Gugino, who portrayed Jessie Burlingame, highlighted in a December 2024 interview the deliberate avoidance of gratuitous self-inflicted harm during the production of key survival sequences, stressing authenticity in conveying physical extremity while rejecting "abuse that [one] doesn't need to go through" in favor of method-driven realism over softened depictions. This approach aligns with the novel's empirical grounding in human limits, as recent viewer discussions note the heightened visceral response elicited by such unvarnished realism compared to more stylized horror.^[61]^[62] Post-2017 streaming availability on Netflix has spurred 2024 reevaluations emphasizing themes of self-reliant endurance, amid broader cultural shifts critiquing overreliance on external systemic interventions in trauma narratives. Analyses favor the book's depiction of Jessie's internal confrontation and resource mobilization as a model of agency, corroborated by psychological research on post-traumatic growth factors such as cognitive reappraisal and autonomy, which demonstrate higher recovery rates among survivors exhibiting proactive coping over passive victim frameworks.^[22]^[60]

References

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Gerald's Game - Stephen King
Gerald and Jessie Burlingame have gone to their summer home on a warm weekday in October for a romantic interlude. After being handcuffed to her bedposts, ...
[2]
Gerald's Game | Book by Stephen King - Simon & Schuster
Publisher: Scribner (February 16, 2016); Length: 400 pages; ISBN13: 9781501144202. Browse Related Books. Fiction > Thrillers > Psychological · Fiction > Movie ...
[3]
Gerald's Game (2017) - Plot - IMDb
When a harmless game between a married couple in a remote retreat suddenly becomes a harrowing fight for survival, wife Jessie must confront long-buried demons.
[4]
Stephen King: The 'Craft' Of Writing Horror Stories
### Summary of Stephen King's Comments on Gerald's Game
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Stephen King, The Art of Fiction No. 189 - The Paris Review
Gerald's Game is the innie-est of all the innie books. It's about only one person, Jessie, who's been handcuffed naked to her bed. The little things all get ...
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[PDF] Identifying first editions (updated 2024) - Stephen King
Gerald's Game. 1992. Viking. 6¼ x 9½ x 1.1". $23.50 "First published in 1992 by ... • Names in brackets denote publisher of limited edition. • Date codes ...
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Stephen King Novels – First Edition Identification Guide
Free delivery 30-day returnsUse the SEARCH to the right to search for title, publication date, publisher, etc… ... Gerald's Game, "First published in 1992 by Viking Penguin" on ...Missing: initial | Show results with:initial
[8]
New York Times Adult Hardcover Best Seller Number Ones Listing
Gerald's Game by Stephen King (Viking) - July 19, 1992. Where Is Joe Merchant? by Jimmy Buffett (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich) - September 20, 1992. The Stars ...
[9]
Gerald's Game by Stephen King | Hachette UK - Hodder & Stoughton
A game. A husband and wife game. Gerald's Game. But this time Jesse doesn't want to play. Lying there, spread-eagled and handcuffed to the bedstead.Missing: publisher | Show results with:publisher
[10]
Editions of Gerald's Game - Books.Infosec.Exchange
Stephen King: Gerald's Game (Paperback, 1993, Signet) · Mass Market Paperback, 445 pages. English language ; Stephen King: Gerald's Game (Hardcover, 1992, Viking) ...
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Gerald's Game eBook by Stephen King - Simon & Schuster
4–8 day deliveryMaster storyteller Stephen King presents this classic, terrifying #1 New York Times bestseller. When a game of seduction between a husband and wife ends in ...
[12]
Gerald's Game by Stephen King - Fantasy Book Review
Rating 8.1/10 (1) Jessie Burlingame has just gone along with so much in her life, especially in her marriage to successful lawyer Gerald. That is how she finds herself handcuffed ...
[13]
Book Review: Gerald's Game by Stephen King - Trey Stone, Author
Aug 6, 2022 · The plot of Gerald's Game is simple: Jessie and Gerald Burlingame go away for the weekend to their cabin in the woods. During some raunchy foreplay.
[14]
Rereading Stephen King, chapter 30: Gerald's Game - The Guardian
Jul 24, 2014 · The book is one of King's simpler plots: a husband and wife are having some BDSM-tinged sex when the husband – the titular Gerald – is killed.
[15]
Gerald's Game Summary and Study Guide | SuperSummary
The novel covers Jessie Burlingame's struggle to escape handcuffs following the death of her husband, Gerald Burlingame, during what was intended to be a ...
[16]
Book Review: Gerald's Game - Milam's Musings
Apr 23, 2022 · I'm not sure I've read a Stephen King book that more epitomizes that old saw than his 1992 novel, Gerald's Game. He puts Jessie Burlingame both ...Missing: date | Show results with:date
[17]
Gerald's Game Character Analysis | SuperSummary
Jessie is characterized as an intelligent, somewhat stubborn person, and her defining trait throughout most of the novel is her ability to repress and suppress ...
[18]
Gerald's Game Characters - eNotes.com
As Jessie grapples with her memories and fears, voices in her mind narrate her practicality, her dread, and her lost innocence. Over time, these voices take ...
[19]
Gerald's Game Characters - BookRags.com
Gerald Burlingame, a corporate lawyer, makes only a brief appearance at the beginning of the novel. His game of bondage is the catalyst for Jessie's change.
[20]
Gerald's Game Themes | SuperSummary
Get ready to explore Gerald's Game and its meaning. Our full analysis and study guide provides an even deeper dive with character analysis and quotes ...
[21]
Gerald's Game: Psychological horror with a heart - Good Bad Taste
Oct 10, 2017 · When Gerald has a heart attack after handcuffing his wife to the bedposts, Jessie is left to survive off only her wits and perseverance. Every ...
[22]
analyzing delayed traumatic reactions in stephen king's gerald's game
The present paper focuses primarily on the mechanism of the delayed traumatic reaction of psychic trauma depicted in Stephen King's psychological novel Gerald's ...<|control11|><|separator|>
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View of "Remembering a Thing and Reliving a Thing Does Not ...
... abuse memory. The rest of the novel is focusedon the woman's struggle ... In 1990, only two years before Gerald's Game was published, child abuse was ...
[24]
Shackled to the Past - The New York Times
Aug 16, 1992 · Incest is the deadliest game of all, far deadlier than Gerald's game. For though sexual abuse is a rather special sort of horror, it is treated ...
[25]
'Gerald's Game' and the Differences Between Female and Male ...
Oct 6, 2017 · Male protagonists find themselves in life or death situations and have to atone for their past sins to survive. Women find themselves in life or death ...
[26]
[PDF] confronting gendered violence in stephen king's gerald's
Similar to Carrie, Gerald's Game and. Dolores Claiborne feature female protagonists—Jessie Burlingame and Dolores Claiborne, respectively—who endure physical, ...
[27]
Gerald's Game Themes - eNotes.com
King taps into modern themes of women's silencing and lack of power, using a female monologue that slowly unearths memories. Characters such as Ruth, Goody ...
[28]
GERALD'S GAME | Kirkus Reviews
7-day returnsKing takes it over the top, way over the top, in an exquisitely horrifying frightfest about a woman forced to face her deepest fears—and then some.
[29]
THE TIES THAT BIND - The Washington Post
Under the best of circumstances, Gerald's game isn't much fun for his wife. To jumpstart his flagging sexual desire the otherwise conservative attorney relies ...
[30]
Gerald's Game by Stephen King, Cronin
### Key Points from Publishers Weekly Review of *Gerald's Game*
[31]
Shackled to the Past - The New York Times
Aug 16, 1992 · GERALD'S GAME By Stephen King. 332 pp. New York: Viking. $23.50. A WOMAN in nothing but a pair of flimsy underpants lies handcuffed to a bed ...
[32]
BEST SELLERS: December 27, 1992 - The New York Times
(LP) 9 11 24 GERALD'S GAME, by Stephen King. (Viking, $23.50.) Twenty-eight hours of horror suffered by a woman handcuffed to a bedpost. 10 9 6 THE ...
[33]
BEST SELLERS: September 13, 1992 - The New York Times
Sep 13, 1992 · Weeks This Last On Week Week List Fiction 1 1 9 GERALD'S GAME, by Stephen King. ... These listings are based on computer-processed sales figures ...
[34]
Gerald's Game by Stephen King | Goodreads
Rating 3.6 (176,766) Gerald's Game is probably one of the most polarizing Stephen King novels I've ever read. The reviews are all over the place, which after reading makes sense ...
[35]
Just finished Reading Gerald's Game - Stephen King
Jan 16, 2019 · Gerald's Game is certainly a disturbing read on many levels, recollection of childhood abuse and a particularly graphic gory scene (those who ...<|separator|>
[36]
Does anyone like Gerald's Game? : r/stephenking - Reddit
Mar 11, 2023 · Gerald's Game details Jesse's internal battle with past demons, imagined fears, and psychological issues, of which she thought, or even feared, that the Space ...Missing: self- reliance
[37]
Mike Flanagan Playing Gerald's Game | Movies - Empire Magazine
May 18, 2014 · With the rights in place and Intrepid Pictures fronting the money to make the movie (while also selling distribution rights at Cannes), Flanagan ...<|separator|>
[38]
How the Director of 'Gerald's Game' Made His Critical Decision ... - GQ
Oct 5, 2017 · Mike Flanagan talked to GQ about the process of adapting a beloved Stephen King book and his approach to its divisive conclusion.
[39]
'Gerald's Game' Movie: Carla Gugino & Bruce Greenwood Star In ...
Oct 17, 2016 · Carla Gugino and Bruce Greenwood have been set to star in Gerald's Game, an adaptation of the Stephen King 1992 bestselling novel.
[40]
The Untold Truth Of Gerald's Game - Looper
Jan 26, 2023 · Flanagan told The Independent that it was actually King himself who suggested Bruce Greenwood for the role of Gerald. Greenwood had starred in a ...
[41]
Gerald's Game (2017) - IMDb
Rating 6.5/10 (139,147) A couple tries to spice up their marriage in a remote lake house. After the husband dies unexpectedly, the wife is left handcuffed to their bed frame.Full cast & crew · Parents guide · User reviews · Gerald's Game
[42]
Gerald's Game (2017) - Filming & production - IMDb
Filming locations · Mobile, Alabama, USA · Point Clear, Alabama, USA · 113 St Joseph St, Mobile, Alabama, USA · Alabama, USA · USA ...
[43]
Visit the scenes of these 3 movies filmed in the beautiful City of Mobile
Sep 9, 2021 · Mobile Civic Center, where the majority of Gerald's Game was filmed. ... Though Fairhope was the primary filming location for this film, several ...
[44]
[Interview] Carla Gugino & Bruce Greenwood on Handcuffs ...
Oct 5, 2017 · We interview Carla Gugino and Bruce Greenwood, the stars of Mike Flanagan's adaptation of Stephen King's novel 'Gerald's Game', at Fantastic ...
[45]
'Gerald's Game' Director Mike Flanagan On THAT Scene ... - SlashFilm
Oct 2, 2017 · In the book, Jessie had her own internal monologue, but in the movie, manifestations of Gerald and herself speak to her throughout her ordeal.
[46]
Gerald's Game: Differences Between The Book & Movie - Screen Rant
May 11, 2020 · Mike Flanagan's Gerald's Game remains extremely loyal to its source but there are still some major changes between film and novel.
[47]
Gerald's Game Ending: Book Vs. Movie Spoilers - Thrillist
Oct 1, 2017 · The premise of Stephen King's 1992 novel Gerald's Game functions like a pair of handcuffs to a filmmaker adapting the story into a movie.
[48]
Gerald's Game and the Representation of PTSD - Scriptophobic
Jun 18, 2018 · Using a hallucination of him to represent that to a viewer is key—the viewer knows he is not real, but he represents the abuse that she has ...Missing: challenges | Show results with:challenges
[49]
Gerald's Game interview: director Mike Flanagan - NME
Sep 27, 2017 · How did you shoot it – with prosthetics? “Yeah, Bob Kurtzman (make-up artist) designed everything. It's all practical effects. Just reading the ...
[50]
Gerald's Game | Rotten Tomatoes
Rating 91% (81) A woman accidentally kills her husband during a kinky game. Handcuffed to her bed with no hope of rescue, she begins hearing voices and seeing strange visions.81 Reviews · 2500+ Ratings · Video · Cast and CrewMissing: character | Show results with:character
[51]
Film Review: ‘Gerald’s Game’
- **Overall Review Tone**: Positive, describing the film as an "arrestingly and sometimes excruciatingly suspenseful psychological thriller" with horror elements, though it may disappoint some King fans.
[52]
Gerald's Game movie review (2017) | Roger Ebert
Rating 3/4 · Review by Brian TallericoSep 29, 2017 · An incredibly well-made film, and Flanagan gets the best performances he's directed yet from Gugino and Greenwood.<|separator|>
[53]
Gerald's Game Reviews - Metacritic
Gerald's Game is a set of tightly wound gears that cranks out dread. Carla Gugino and Bruce Greenwood are as superb as they have ever been. By William Bibbiani ...Gerald's Game critic reviewsGerald's Game user reviews
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Processing Trauma in Gerald's Game | Tilt Magazine
Oct 6, 2017 · Mike Flanagan's Gerald's Game's ending undercuts its original perspective, diminishing its potential for a deepened look at trauma.
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Carla Gugino Worried 'Gerald's Game' Would Be 'the End of My ...
Apr 2, 2024 · Carla Gugino worried that by playing “Gerald's Game,” she might lose her career forever. The actress revealed to Buzzfeed that first collaborating with future ...Missing: reflections | Show results with:reflections
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Behind the Eclipse: Complicating Sexual Assault in Gerald's Game
Nov 6, 2017 · Jessie (Carla Gugino) and Gerald Burlingame (Bruce Greenwood) travel to their secluded lake house in an attempt to save their failing marriage.
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The Great Stephen King Reread: Gerald's Game - Reactor
Nov 6, 2013 · Gerald's Game (May, 1992) and Dolores Claiborne (November, 1992) were about the development of feminist consciousness, the crimes of the patriarchy, incest, ...
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All Stephen King Novels of the 1990s, Ranked - Collider
Jan 18, 2022 · 12. Bag of Bones · 11. The Regulators · 10. Rose Madder · 9. The Green Mile · 8. Insomnia · 7. Desperation · 6. Needful Things · 5. Gerald's Game.
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Analysis Of Gerald'S Game By Stephen King – A Great Example Of ...
Jun 10, 2020 · A writer like Stephen King writes a psychological horror novel aiming to create fear by exposing common psychological and emotional ...
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The Most Disturbing Scene in a Stephen King Movie Has a ... - Collider
Jun 16, 2024 · Mike Flanagan's adaptation of Stephen King's Gerald's Game features a scene where Crala Gugino's character must gruesomely mutilate herself.
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Actress from Stephen King movie on Netflix reveals how 'brutal ...
Dec 23, 2024 · Smashing a glass left on the bedside table, she cuts a Y-shape incision up her wrist and into her palm, forcing her hand down through the cuff ...
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Is anyone doing 31 days of Halloween? : r/TooScaryDidntWatch
Oct 2, 2024 · Excellent revival of the series. ... I love slow burns and this didn't do it for me. 27. Gerald's Game - I found this movie genuinely disturbing ...