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escape from handcuffs would not have worked in real world!
The handcuff escape done by Jesse, as described in this book, NEVER could have worked in the REAL world!! Surprsied that no other post in this section has noted that. Am even more surprised that a highly paid author like Stephen King (what does he get..about $5 million per advance on each book he writes??) Sadly this is most typical media fantasy that people accept as fact.
Here is what happened in Gerald's Game and mentoned below this are some REALITIES!!
Eventually Jesse was able to get free by cutting her right wrist with a broken glass and used the blood caused by this cut as a sort of lubricant to slip out. She also 'degloved' her hand in the process. However, there were several major mistakes made by King in having this 'escape' play out this way. These were:
A) Jesse got 'inspired' to try to escape by slipping out of the handcuffs when she remembered that her husband--a high powered lawyer--had been forced 'to settle' for buying the M-17 model 'security' handcuffs instead of the F-23 model. Supposedly the M-17 model handcuffs were for males since they had just 17 adjustable notches them (since males have bigger hands and wrists than women) as opposed to the 23 that existed in the female handcuffs for the smaller wrists of women. Jesse remembered that the very first time she had been locked up by her husband in these handcuffs that she had ALMOST slipped out of them. Gerald was willing to 'settle' for the M-17 model since his wife, Jesse, had larger hands and wrists than most women. He had said that petite women were able to slip out of the M-17 model handcuffs. (With VERY petite women with VERY small hands and wrists, this actually would be a reality.)
However, from what I have seen in my own handcuff buying and use there are NOT 'male' and 'female' models of handcuffs--just a 'standard' model which all have 24 notches. Thus if Gerald used REAL WORLD handcuffs on his wife, she would have no chance of slipping out of them and would have bled to death after cutting her wrist. The bones in her hand would have made just about any movement i them, much less slipping out of them impossible.
B) Even assuming that there WERE 17 and 23 notch model handcuffs (for men and women), there seems just about no way that Jesse could have slipped out of even the 'male' M-17 model of handcuffs she was locked up in. It was mentioned that she had 'bigger hands and wrists' than normal women. In my handcuff use experience with women, a woman with 'bigger than normal hands and wrists' can be most securely locked up when the normal handcuffs go down eight or at most to nine notches. Even when the handcuffs go down just eight or nnine notches, it fits totally securely on the wrist with very little 'wiggle room' being available. There would be NO WAY for Jesse to move the handcuffs much past the very bottom of her hand even with them clicked down just eight or nine notches. The lubricants she later tried to use would have been of no aid to her whatsoever.
And if these handcuffs had been put down 17 notches (as happened in this book), a woman with the wrists and hands of the size Jesse had would have the handcuffs biting strongly into the skin on her wrists and would have had NO MOVEMENT AT ALL possible with the handcuffs. Very likely, Jesse would have had her circulation cut off with a handcuff locked down 17 notches.
"Gerald's Game" was a nice story. Too bad that it was total fantasy in its key moment--when Jesse saved her life by getting loose from the handcuffs. But--with the way the fantasy media works--her escaping seemingly certain death in the dramatic way King wrote of--'reads better' than the reality of her dying in a very agonizing and frustrating way.
Of course if King had Jesse use some other option of escape (like somehow moving the bed over to the drawer to get and then use the keys there (though hard to imagine how she--being handcuffed to the bed could have not only grabbed the keys but also been able to put them in the lock and unlock them (most often when a person unlocks him/herself from handcuffs, one hand unlocks the handcuff on the opposite wrist (not possible here since the six inch chain would have prevented one hand from reaching the opposite handcuff lock).
Thus I don't see how Jesse--haivng just herself to depend on--could have unlcoked the handcuffs locked on her wrists even making the rather questionable assumption that she could have reached the keys in the first place.
Two other possibilities would be to somehow reach the phone and dial the operator with her toes. However that very option WAS tried in the book and was shown to be impossible for Jesse to do. The other one--mentioend by some people in the various threads--would be somehow to break the bed posts that she was handcuffed to. Being made of very strong wood, it seemed unlikely that Jesse could break these bedposts by using her hands to pull on them and also seemed unlikely that the metal of the handcuffs (if pulled on very hard by Jesse--this 'pulling' on the handcuffs would seem to have had VERY bad 'consequences' for her wrists) would be able to break the sturdy wood posts she was truly 'attached' to.
If this whole story had happened in the world of reality, the virtually 100% sad and ugly truth was that when Jesse indirectly caused her husband, Gerald, to die of a heart attack that she would have been killing herself at the same time.
Originally Posted by Moderator
h My God!
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