Gerald's Game is a 1992 suspense novel by American writer Stephen King. The story is about a woman whose husband dies of a heart attack while she is handcuffed to a bed, and, following the subsequent realization that she is trapped with little hope of rescue, begins to let the voices inside her head take over.
The book is dedicated to King's wife Tabitha and her sisters: "This book is dedicated, with love and admiration, to six good women: Margaret Spruce Morehouse, Catherine Spruce Graves, Stephanie Spruce Leonard, Anne Spruce Labree, Tabitha Spruce King, and Marcella Spruce." Originally the book was intended to be a companion piece to King's novel Dolores Claiborne, with the connecting theme of two women in crisis caught in the path of an eclipse, though this aspect was greatly reduced by the time the books were published.
Video Gerald's Game
Plot
Jessie Burlingame and her husband Gerald have gone to a secluded cabin in western Maine for an off-beat romantic day off. Gerald, a successful lawyer with an aggressive personality, has been able to reinvigorate the couple's sex life by handcuffing Jessie to the bed. Jessie has enjoyed the game before, but suddenly balks. As Gerald starts to crawl on top of her, knowing her protests are real but ignoring them anyway, she kicks him in the stomach and in the groin. He falls from the bed to the floor, has a fatal heart attack, and dies. Jessie is alone in the cabin, unable to move off the bed or call for help.
Eventually, a stray dog starts feeding on Gerald's body. Jessie is troubled by a terrifying, deformed apparition, whom she initially mistakes for the spirit of her long-dead father. Jessie begins to think of this visitor as the "Space Cowboy" (after a line from a Steve Miller song, "The Joker"), saying out loud that he is "not anyone", and that he was only "made of moonlight". A combination of panic and thirst causes Jessie to hallucinate. She hears voices in her head, each ostensibly the voice of a person in her life, primarily "The Goodwife" or "Goody Burlingame" (a Puritanical version of Jessie), Ruth Neary (an old college friend), and Nora Callighan (her ex-psychiatrist), neither of whom Jessie has spoken to in years. These voices represent different parts of her personality which help her extract a painful childhood memory she has kept suppressed for many years. She was sexually abused by her father at age ten during a solar eclipse which occurred in her hometown. She also begins to realize how unhappy her marriage had been, and that she sacrificed a potentially happy life for the security of Gerald's paycheck by being a trophy wife without children.
Jessie makes increasingly desperate attempts to escape, first by trying to break the headboard she is cuffed to, then by trying to slip off the bed and push it to the bureau where the keys are placed. One of the voices in her head tells her that if she stays another night, the Space Cowboy will take a part of her to add to his trophy "fishing creel" filled with jewelry and human bones. Jessie escapes the handcuffs by slicing her wrist open on a piece of broken glass, giving herself a degloving injury to lubricate her skin enough for the cuffs to slide off her right hand. She is then able to move behind the bed, push it to the bureau, and use one of the keys to unlock her left handcuff. She passes out from blood loss. When she awakens, the Space Cowboy has made his way back into the house. Jessie confronts him and throws her wedding ring at his box of jewelry and bones, thinking that is what he wanted all along. Jessie then runs out of the house. She makes it into her car and escapes the house, but is terrified to discover the Space Cowboy sitting in the back seat. Jessie crashes and is knocked unconscious.
Months later, Jessie is recuperating and being looked after by a nurse. An ambitious associate attorney at Gerald's law firm assists her in covering up the incident to protect her and the law firm from scandal, as well as assisting her in her recuperation. Jessie writes to Ruth Neary, detailing what happened after the incident and her recuperation process. She details a serial necrophile and murderer, named Raymond Andrew Joubert, making his way through Maine; he was the Space Cowboy, confirmed when Jessie confronted him in a court hearing and Joubert mimicked Jessie's arm positions while she was in the handcuffs. He also repeats her frightened exclamations, when she thought he was the Space Cowboy apparition, that Joubert was "not anyone" and "made of moonlight." In the novel's epilogue, Jessie mentions that the dog, having been abandoned, was shot and killed by the police.
Maps Gerald's Game
Film adaptation
In May 2014, Deadline.com reported that Mike Flanagan was set to direct a film adaptation. In an interview with Rue Morgue in September 2016, Mike Flanagan said that the film adaptation would premiere on Netflix. He did not state when the film would premiere or whether Stephen King would be involved. In October 2016, Deadline reported that Carla Gugino and Bruce Greenwood will star in the film as Jessie and Gerald Burlingame. On October 17, 2016, Flanagan tweeted indicating the first day of production had begun.
The film premiered on Netflix on September 29, 2017.
See also
- Solar eclipses in fiction
References
External links
- Gerald's Game on Netflix
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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