The Shining
By: Stephen King
There are three things in life Jack Torrance loves: writing, his family, and alcohol. It is easy to guess which love he must keep in check and which two he is able to enjoy in abundance. Unfortunately, by the end of The Shining Jack has abused all three of his loves and ruined his life.
Jack’s troubles begin when he accidentally breaks his son’s arm in a drunken rage and loses Wendy’s trust. When he quits drinking, his wife refuses to believe he has quit for good and continues to smell his breath for signs of alcohol months after he stops. To make things worse, he is fired from his job at a preparatory school and things continue to go downhill from there. In an attempt to gain some much needed money, Jack applies for a job as caretaker for a famous hotel called the Overlook, built high in the Colorado mountains. He and his family will be forced to spend the winter living in the hotel making sure the boiler does not explode and doing many other small jobs to keep the hotel in working order so it is ready when the snows melt and the roads are once again open. He hopes that by staying together for eight months he will be able to repair his relationship with Wendy and his son, Danny, and complete a play he has been working on for some time. Like much else in his life, though, Jack Torrance’s plan backfires and instead of fixing his connection with his wife and child, he destroys it in an irrevocable way.
The winter season starts off well for the Torrances, with a guide from the Overlook’s friendly cook, Hallorann, nicknamed Dick. Both Hallorann and Danny have what the cook calls “the shining,” the ability to sense what others are thinking and pick up supernatural occurrences most people cannot see. He warns Danny not to enter certain rooms, like the presidential suite or room 217, because he will be able to see the deaths that took place there many years before. He also tells Danny if he meets any trouble he should call him immediately using his gift, and he will come to the boy’s aid.
Once the cook and the rest of the hotel staff leave, life takes on a monotonous routine that the family does not seem to mind. Things change when Jack finds an old scrapbook telling the history of the hotel and the Overlook starts to influence his thoughts and actions. Slowly, the hotel begins to come to life around them in the form of ghostly parties and strange people keeping residence in the rooms. The hotel consumes Jack and through him attempts to kill both Wendy and Danny. Dick hears Danny’s call for help when the boy senses the changes in his father, and comes to help them, but only succeeds in getting his face smashed in with a roque mallet.
The story comes to a climax when Jack, mallet in hand, corners Danny at the end of a lonely corridor. Danny knows it is not his father about to strike him, but some mutated form of the hotel trying to kill him and absorb his unusual power. His pleas somehow reach a piece of the real Jack deep inside the crazed madman in front of him, and instead of killing his son, Jack decides to turn his weapon upon himself. As his own life fades away, the hotel takes over his body and Jack is gone. Suddenly, it realizes the boiler has not been turned down, and rushes to the basement to lower the temperature before the whole building burns to the ground. While it is distracted, Danny finds his mother, and together they rescue Dick and escape. Jack’s mangled body reaches the boiler too late, and the Overlook explodes, ensuring it will never hurt another family again.
