The Shining (novel)
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For other uses of this term, see Shining (disambiguation).
The Shining (1977) is a horror novel by American author Stephen King. The title was inspired by the John Lennon song "Instant Karma!", which contained the line "We all shine on…" King had originally wanted to call the book "The Shine," but changed it when he realized that "shine" was derogatory slang for blacks. It was King's third published novel, and first hardback bestseller, and the success of the book firmly established King as a pre-eminent author in the horror genre. A film based upon the book, The Shining directed by Stanley Kubrick, was released in 1980. The book was later adapted into a television mini-series in 1997.
Plot summaryJack Torrance is a temperamental writer who is trying to rebuild the lives of his family and himself after his alcoholism caused him to break his (then) three-year-old son Danny's arm, and then caused him to assault a pupil at a New England prep school, therefore losing his job. Having given up drinking, he accepts a job as a winter caretaker at a large, isolated, Colorado resort hotel with a gory history. Hoping to prove that he has recovered from his alcoholism, and is now a responsible person, Jack moves into the Overlook Hotel with his wife, Wendy, and young son, Danny, who is telepathic and sensitive to supernatural forces. Shortly after the family's arrival at the hotel Danny and the Hotel Chef, Dick Hallorann, have a brief private talk before Dick departs to warmer climates for the winter. They discuss Danny's telepathic talent and the hotel's sinister nature. Dick informs Danny that he also shares Danny's abilities (though to a lesser degree), as did Dick's Grandmother, who called it "shining". Dick warns Danny to avoid room 217 at all costs, and tries to reassure Danny that the things he will see are like "pictures in a book" and "I don't think those things [referring to the things he might see] can hurt anybody." The conversation ends with Dick saying to Danny "If there is trouble...You give a [telepathic] call." The hotel is both a personality in its own right and a kind of psychic lens: it manipulates both the living and the dead for its own purposes; it also magnifies the psychic powers of any living people who reside there, giving them the power to resist its will. Danny, who has had premonitions of the hotel's danger to his family, begins seeing ghosts and frightening visions from the hotel's past, but puts up with them in the hope that they are not dangerous in the present. He doesn't tell his parents about his visions because he senses how important the job of caretaker is to his father's and his family's future. Having difficulty possessing Danny, the hotel begins to possess Jack, frustrating his need and desire to work. As Jack becomes increasingly unstable, the sinister ghost of the hotel gradually begins to overtake him. Eventually, Jack becomes possessed by the hotel, which attempts to use him to kill Wendy and Danny in order to absorb Danny's psychic abilities. Wendy and Danny manage to get the better of Jack, locking him into the walk-in pantry, but the ghost of Delbert Grady, one of the Overlook's former caretakers who murdered his family and then committed suicide, releases him. By this time Wendy has discovered that they are completely isolated at the Overlook, for Jack has disabled the hotel's snowmobile. An ugly battle occurs between Wendy and Jack/The Hotel. Jack/The Hotel, using one the hotel's "roque" mallets, manages to break three of Wendy's ribs, break her kneecap, and shatter her vertebrae, while she stabs him in the small of his back with a large butcher knife. Through incredible strength and spirit, Wendy escapes, half running, half crawling into the caretaker's suite and locking herself in the bathroom, with Jack/The Hotel in pursuit. By this point, Dick Hallorann, whom Danny has summoned to the hotel through the use of the shining, has come all the way to The Overlook to investigate. Jack/The Hotel leaves Wendy in the bathroom and attempts to kill Hallorann, shattering his jaw and giving him a concussion with the roque mallet. Jack/The Hotel then pursues Danny. Danny escapes by reminding Jack/The Hotel that the unstable boiler in the basement is about to burst and destroy the hotel. Jack/The Hotel rushes to the basement while Danny, Wendy, and Hallorann flee the hotel as it explodes. The novel ends with Danny and Wendy summering at a resort in Maine where Dick is the head chef. BackgroundAfter writing Carrie and Salem's Lot, both of which are set in small towns in King's home state of Maine, King was looking for a change of pace for the next book. "I wanted to spend a year away from Maine so that my next novel would have a different sort of background."[1] King opened an atlas of the US on the kitchen table and randomly pointed to a location, which turned out to be Boulder, Colorado.[2] So in early 1974, King packed up his wife, Tabitha, and their two children, Naomi and Joe, and moved across the country to Colorado. Around Halloween, Tabitha decided that the adult Kings needed a mini-vacation and, on the advice of locals, they decided to try out a resort hotel adjacent to Estes Park, Colorado (nestled at the foot of the Rocky Mountain National Park) called the Stanley Hotel. On October 30, 1974,[3] Stephen and Tabitha checked into the Stanley. They almost weren't able to check in as the hotel was closing for the off season the next day and the credit card slips had already been packed away. Stephen and Tabitha were the only two guests in the hotel that night. "When we arrived, they were just getting ready to close for the season, and we found ourselves the only guests in the place — with all those long, empty corridors . . ."[1] They checked into room 217. Ten years prior, King had read Ray Bradbury's The Veldt and was inspired to someday write a story about a person whose dreams would become real. In 1972 King started a novel entitled Darkshine, which was to be about a psychic boy in a psychic amusement park, but the idea never came to fruition and King abandoned the book. During the night at the Stanley, this story came back to him.[4] Tabitha and Stephen had dinner that evening in the grand dining room, totally alone. They were offered one choice for dinner, the only meal still available. Taped orchestral music played in the room and theirs was the only table set for dining. "Except for our table all the chairs were up on the tables. So the music is echoing down the hall, and, I mean, it was like God had put me there to hear that and see those things. And by the time I went to bed that night, I had the whole book in my mind".[5] After dinner, Tabitha decided to turn in, but Stephen took a walk around the empty hotel. He ended up in the bar and was served drinks by a bartender named Grady.[3] "That night I dreamed of my three-year-old son running through the corridors, looking back over his shoulder, eyes wide, screaming. He was being chased by a fire-hose. I woke up with a tremendous jerk, sweating all over, within an inch of falling out of bed. I got up, lit a cigarette, sat in a chair looking out the window at the Rockies, and by the time the cigarette was done, I had the bones of the book firmly set in my mind."[2] Originally conceived as a five-act tragedy play, the story evolved into a five-act novel that also included a lot of King's own personal demons. "I was able to invest a lot of my unhappy aggressive impulses in Jack Torrance, and it was safe."[2] "Sometimes you confess. You always hide what you're confessing to. That's one of the reasons why you make up the story. When I wrote The Shining, for instance, the protagonist of The Shining is a man who has broken his son's arms, who has a history of child beating, who is beaten himself. And as a young father with two children, I was horrified by my occasional feelings of real antagonism toward my children. Won't you ever stop? Won't you ever go to bed? And time has given me the idea that probably there are a lot of young fathers and young mothers both who feel very angry, who have angry feelings toward their children. But as somebody who has been raised with the idea that father knows best and Ward Cleaver on 'Leave It To Beaver,' and all this stuff, I would think to myself, Oh, if he doesn't shut up, if he doesn't shut up. . . . So when I wrote this book I wrote a lot of that down and tried to get it out of my system, but it was also a confession. Yes, there are times when I felt very angry toward my children and have even felt as though I could hurt them. Well, my kids are older now. Naomi is fifteen and Joey is thirteen and Owen is eight, and they're all super kids, and I don't think I've laid a hand on one of my kids in probably seven years, but there was a time . . . ,"[1] According to "Guests and Ghosts", an Internet article, the Stanley, which was built by Freelan Oscar ("F. O.") Stanley based on the designs of his wife, Flora, opened in 1903 and was "once a luxury hotel for the well-heeled Edwardian-era tourist." The hotel boasts having had such guests as not only King but also Theodore Roosevelt, Bob Dylan, Billy Graham, Japan’s Emperor Hirohito, and John Philip Sousa.[5] The Shining was also heavily influenced by Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House,[6] Edgar Allan Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death"[4] and Robert Marasco's Burnt Offerings.[2] Critical examinationThe story is an entry in the Gothic horror genre drawing on the concept of a building having a conscious will, an idea previously explored by Edgar Allan Poe in "The Fall of the House of Usher" and Shirley Jackson in The Haunting of Hill House. King himself has said that The Shining includes an exploration of alcohol dependence and relationships with parents and children in the life of an individual. Relationship to the films and to King's other works
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