Day 22: The Shining

There is a lot of unsettling stuff going on in The Shining even before the ghosts come out to play. A strained marriage, an odd child with a powerful gift, a recovering alcoholic who has flare ups of violent rage.  The thought of being alone in a closed hotel in the mountains, snowed in for months...it'd be hard to deal with even if the place wasn't haunted. 


Jack Torrance is a bottled-up pit of rage even before the hotel starts to get into his mind.  In fact, some of the most frightening parts of the book are quite early on in the novel, when we are witness to his thoughts about his wife and his son. Jack isn't evil. He certainly loves Danny, and he probably really loves Wendy, but he is a man who is about to snap. If it hadn't been the hotel, it would have been something else. 


As the snow begins to fall and the hotel beings to exert its influence more and more, the tension is pretty much non-stop.  At one point, even a fire hose seems menacing, as Danny imagines(??) that it is following him down the hallway.  


There's an interesting take on haunting here. It really is a story of a haunted hotel, and not ghost story.  There are individual figures that we see, and that Jack especially interacts with, but all of them seem to be the hotel made manifest, rather than particular spirits. Hallorann even comments near the end that even with the hotel gone, he'd never come within 100 miles of the place again.  The place, the very land, is empowered by all the evils (both large and mundane) that happened over the years of the hotel's existence.


It's well-known that King was unhappy with the film version. It's not that hard to understand why. Kubrick's The Shining is just that. Kubrick's. The move doesn't just take a few liberties with the story. It changes it a great deal. I actually love both, and it'd be hard for me to pick which I like more. They work in very different ways.


One thing that stuck me is that some of the scariest moments (Wendy discovering Jack's manuscript, the elevator of blood, "Come play with us") of the film don't take place in the novel, and vice versa.  But while I think Wendy discovering the reams of paper Jack has been working on for weeks just say "All work and no play make Jack a dull boy" is one of the scariest moments in ANY horror movie, I don't think it would have quite the same impact on film. And the elevator of blood certainly wouldn't, since so much of that's efffectiveness was in the way Kubrick shoot's things.  On the other hand, on of the scariest things in the book is the hedge animals that Jack sees move, then chase Danny and eventually attack Dick.  I don't think there's anyway that could have looked anything other than stupid on film.


I think this is one of King's strongest works. The tension builds nicely. There's more to the story than just gross violence. The characters are well-fleshed out and you care about them. I really want to re-watch the movie, and also watch the later mini-series which is supposed to adhere more closely with the original text.

The Shining Overview

Connections: The "shine" appears in The Stand. Dick Hallorann is in It, The novel and film are both referenced in other books. A poem read by Jack also appears in Lisey's Story. A sequel, featuring a grown-up Danny is being published in 2013.

Car Talk: The old VW is mentioned a lot, but no slavish car descriptions.

Writing on Writers: The second novel in a row to feature a writer as the primary character. King's writing and his own struggle with drinking problems influenced a lot of Jack's character.

Lameness of Ending: I'm going to say not at all lame. 

Fear Level: 7 out of 10 - The hedge maze animals, the first description of the lady in the tub. He even makes a fire hose scary. 

Overall Rating: 8 out of 10. Interesting characters and a good creepy story. One of his best.

Next Book: Rage (the first of the Bachman books)