The Shining
“Wendy? Darling? Light, of my life. I'm not gonna hurt ya. I'm just going to bash your brains in.”
King’s novel is a classic ghost story; while also painting a painful portrait of a man’s mental breakdown.
That man is Jack Torrance, a gifted writer who has squandered his talent with booze and a bad temper. He and his family – wife Wendy, young son Danny – are wintering at the Overlook, a hotel in the Colorado mountains with a long and checkered past. Jack has been given a job as the caretaker of the Overlook. It’s his last chance to make good after losing a teaching position at a prestigious prep school. All he has to do is keep the rooms heated, provide basic upkeep, and make minor repairs. He thinks the job will give him plenty of time to finish the play he has been laboring on. The only trick is the isolation. Once the snows move in, they will make the winding mountain roads impassable. The Overlook will be cut off. It’s the perfect spot to do some writing, go homicidally crazy, or both.
The genius of The Shining is the simplicity of its setting. Isolated location. Spirit infested living accommodations. Precocious child. All these story elements are exceedingly familiar. Layered onto this foundation is King’s exploration of Jack’s increasingly fragile psyche. King is at the height of his powers in his evocation of Jack. He makes visceral the taste of crushed aspirin, the piercing headaches, the desperate thirst for a drink. Jack is a complex character, at once a loving husband, a doting father, a grade-A prick, and a self-destructive wreck.
King is known for outsized epics with dozens of characters. Here, he pares things down to four main players. Besides Jack there are Wendy, Danny, and Dick Hallorann, the Overlook’s chef. King cleverly utilizes a third-person limited viewpoint, which allows him a tell the story through several eyes, giving him the ability to both widen and narrow the focus at his whim.
The book version of Jack Torrance is far different from his cinematic shadow. He begins as a deeply flawed man with an ugly past, a serious addiction, and a nasty streak a mile wide. But he is also a man who loves – or believes he loves – his wife and child. You see flashes of a good man, a man you don’t want to see destroyed. The erosion of Jack’s mind and soul is The Shining’s narrative backbone. King paints an indelible portrait. Jack chewing Excedrin after Excedrin. Jack wiping his lips till they bleed. Jack trying to distract himself from the thought of a drink. Jack trying to reconcile the man he wanted to be with the man he has demonstrated to the world. This is a fully realized and unforgettable character. It’s an accomplishment, and a testament to King’s skill. A skill, perhaps, that is sometimes overlooked.
