| “ | The Overlook Hotel clamed the most beautiful physical setting of any resort in the world; but Jack Torrance, the new winter caretaker, with his wife Wendy and their five-year-old son Danny, saw much more than its splendor.
Jack saw the Overlook as an opportunity, a desparate way back from failure and dispair; Wendy saw this lonely sanctuary as a frail chance to preserve their family; and Danny?... Danny, who was blessed or cursed with a shining, precognitive gift, saw visions hideously beyond the comprehension of a small boy. He sensed the evil coiled with the Overlook's 110 empty rooms, an evil that was waiting just for them. The Shining, by Stephen King, the undisputed master of the modern horror story. |
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— First edition, dust jacket, inside flap
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The Shining is the third book published by Stephen King. It is his third novel. The book was released by Doubleday in January 28, 1977.
The book was followed in 2013 by the sequel, Doctor Sleep.
Plot[]
Jack Torrance, a loving father when sober, is a temperamental alcoholic and aspiring writer. He is trying to rebuild his life after previously breaking his son Danny's arm and assaulting a pupil at a Vermont prep school where he was a teacher. After losing his teaching position and giving up drinking, Jack accepts a job as a winter caretaker at the large, isolated Overlook Hotel in Colorado to prove that he has recovered from alcoholism and is now a responsible person. Jack also plans to write a new play, believing the isolation will inspire him. Jack, his wife Wendy, and the clairvoyant Danny move into the Overlook. Jack's job was provided to him as a last chance by a close friend of his, Al Shockley, a fellow recovering alcoholic, who knows the hotel's board of trustees.
Danny's clairvoyance makes him sensitive to supernatural forces. Shortly after the family's initial arrival at the hotel, Danny and the hotel chef, Dick Hallorann, talk privately to discuss Danny's talent and the hotel's sinister nature. Dick informs Danny that he 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, and reassures him that the things he may see are merely pictures which cannot harm him. The conversation ends with Dick saying to Danny, "If there is trouble...you give a shout."
The hotel has a personality in its own right, and acts as a psychic lens: It manipulates the living and the dead for its own purposes, and magnifies the psychic powers of any living people who reside there to make them more sensitive to its urgings. Danny has premonitions of the hotel's danger to his family and 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. Although Danny is close to his father, he does not tell either of his parents about his visions because he senses that the caretaking job is important to his father and his family's future. However, Danny realizes that his presence in the hotel makes it more powerful, and enables it to make objects and situations dangerous that would normally not be dangerous, like topiary animals that come to life.
The hotel has difficulty possessing Danny, so it begins to possess Jack, frustrating his need and desire to work on his play. Jack becomes increasingly unstable, and the sinister ghosts of the hotel gradually begin to overtake him. One day he goes to the bar of the hotel, previously empty of alcohol, and finds it fully stocked. He also meets the ghostly bartender, Lloyd. He quickly gets drunk, which allows the hotel to possess him more fully. The hotel attempts to use Jack 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, a former caretaker who murdered his family and then committed suicide, releases him. Wendy discovers that they are completely isolated at the Overlook, as Jack has sabotaged the hotel's snowmobile and smashed the CB radio in the office. She and Jack battle. Jack strikes Wendy with one of the hotel's roque mallets, breaking three ribs, a leg, and one vertebra in her back. Wendy stabs Jack in the small of his back with a large butcher knife, then crawls away to the caretaker's suite and locks herself in the bathroom, with the injured and bleeding Jack in pursuit.
Hallorann, working at a winter resort in Florida, hears Danny's psychic call for help and rushes back to the Overlook. Hallorann's journey to Colorado is fraught with danger and obstacles, the chief being an intense snowstorm. He finally arrives at the hotel and enters the main lobby.
Jack leaves Wendy in the bathroom and ambushes Hallorann with the roque mallet, shattering his jaw and giving him a concussion, before setting off after Danny. Danny distracts Jack by saying "You're not my daddy," having realized that the Overlook had completely taken over Jack by playing on his alcoholism. Jack temporarily regains control of himself and tells Danny, "Run away. Quick. And remember how much I love you," before the hotel causes Jack to kill himself with the roque mallet. Danny tells the thing Jack has become that the unstable boiler is going to explode, and it rushes to the basement as Danny, Wendy, and Hallorann flee. Though the Jack-thing tries to relieve the pressure, the boiler explodes, destroying the Overlook. The building's spirit makes one last desperate attempt to possess Hallorann and make him kill Danny and Wendy, but he shakes it off and brings them to safety.
The novel ends with Danny and Wendy summering at a resort in Maine where Hallorann, the head chef, is comforting Danny over the loss of his father while teaching him to fish in the ocean.
Characters[]
- Jack Torrance
- Wendy Torrance
- Danny Torrance
- Dick Hallorann
- Stuart Ullman
- Bill Watson
- Delbert Grady
- Lorraine Massey
- Horace M. Derwent
- Lloyd
- Roger
- Victor T. Boorman
- Roger Macassi
- Darla
- Sheila
- Albert Shockley
- Bill Edmonds
- Sally
- Mrs. Brant
- Mr. Braddock
- Mike
- Sally the Maid
- Larry Durkin
- Howard Cottrell
- Mr. Queems
- Frank Masterton
- Mr. Baedecker
- McIver
- Tom Staunton
- Tom
- Elaine
- Carlton Vecker (flashback)
- Mr. Trent (flashback)
- Delores Vickery (flashback)
- Mr. Massey (flashback)
- Archer Houghton (flashback)
- Mrs. Grady (flashback)
- Alexa Grady (flashback)
- Alexie Grady (flashback)
- Vito Giannelli (flashback)
- U.S. Senator (flashback)
- Robert Townley Watson (flashback)
- Richard Watson (flashback)
- Sarah Watson (flashback)
- Boyd Watson (flashback)
- James Parris (flashback)
- Charles Grondin (flashback)
- Clyde Brandywine (flashback)
- Cecil Brandywine (flashback)
- Robert Norman (flashback)
- Harry Durker (flashback)
- Bill Pillsbury (flashback)
- Lottie Kilgallon-Pillsbury (flashback)
- Harold M. Pillsbury (flashback)
- Malvina Verecker (flashback)
- Dr. Verecker (flashback)
- Mark Torrance (flashback)
- Mike Torrance (flashback)
- Brett Torrance (flashback)
- Becky Torrance (flashback)
- Sister Beatrice (flashback)
- Rose Hallorann (flashback)
- Carl Hallorann (flashback)
- Aileen (flashback)
- Phyllis Sandler (flashback)
- George Hatfield (flashback)
- Brian Hatfield (flashback)
- Mr. Dorsky (flashback)
- Ms. Strong (flashback)
- Mr. Crommert (flashback)
- Harry Effinger (flashback)
- Mr. Bruckner (flashback)
- Zach Tunney (flashback)
- Scott Aaronson (flashback)
- Mr. Aaronson (flashback)
- Mrs. Aaronson (flashback)
- Robin Stenger (flashback)
- Vic Stenger (flashback)
- Mrs. Stenger (flashback)
- Wally Hollis (flashback)
- Dick (flashback)
- Jane (flashback)
- Jip (flashback)
- Brent (flashback)
- Andy (flashback)
- Arthur Longley Shockley (flashback)
- Sylvia Hunter-Derwent (flashback)
- Henry Finkel (flashback)
- Margery Morris (flashback)
- Charles Grondin (flashback)
- Rodney Conklin (flashback)
- Dick Bows (flashback)
- Robert T. Leffing (flashback)
- David Felton (flashback)
- Charles Battaglia (flashback)
- Richard Scarne (flashback)
- Peter Zeiss (flashback)
- Carl Prashkin (flashback)
- Walt Abruzzi (flashback)
- Benjamin Moorer (flashback)
- Josh Brannigar (flashback)
- Frank Scoffy (flashback)
- Jack Morgan (flashback)
- Mrs. Arkinbauer (flashback)
- Tommy (mentioned)
Background[]
After writing Carrie and 'Salem's Lot, which are both set in small towns in King's native 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". King opened an atlas of the US on the kitchen table and randomly pointed to a location, which turned out to be Boulder, Colorado. On October 30, 1974, King and his wife Tabitha checked into The Stanley Hotel in nearby Estes Park, Colorado. They 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".
Ten years earlier, King had read Ray Bradbury's 1950 short story "The Veldt" and was inspired to 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 he abandoned the book. During the night at the Stanley, this story came back to him.
King and his wife 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". After dinner, his wife decided to turn in, but King took a walk around the empty hotel. He ended up in the bar and was served drinks by a bartender named Grady.
In King's words: "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".
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 arm, 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...
Before writing The Shining, King had written Roadwork and The Body which were both published later. The first draft of The Shining took less than four months to complete and he was able to publish it before the others. The title was inspired by the 1970 John Lennon song "Instant Karma!", which contained the line "We all shine on".
Bill Thompson, King's editor at Doubleday, tried to talk him out of The Shining because he thought that after writing Carrie and 'Salem's Lot, he would get "typed" as a horror writer. King considered that a compliment.
Deleted prologue and epilogue[]
Originally, there was a prologue titled "Before the Play" that chronicled earlier events in the Overlook's history, as well as an epilogue titled "After the Play", though neither remained part of the published novel. The prologue was later published in Whispers magazine in August 1982, and an abridged version appeared in the April 26–May 2, 1997 issue of TV Guide to promote the then-upcoming miniseries of The Shining. The epilogue was thought to have been lost, but was re-discovered in 2016 as part of an early manuscript version of the novel. Both "Before the Play" and "After the Play" was published as part of the Deluxe Special Edition of The Shining by Cemetery Dance Publications in early 2017.
Franchise[]
Sequel[]
On November 19, 2009, during a reading at the Canon Theatre in Toronto, King described to the audience an idea for a sequel to The Shining. The idea was prompted by the occasional person asking, "What ever happened to Danny?" The story would follow Danny Torrance, now in his 40s, living in Vermont, where he works as an orderly at a hospice and helps terminally ill patients pass away with the aid of some extraordinary powers. Later, on December 1, 2009, King posted a poll on his official website, asking visitors to vote for which book he should write next, Doctor Sleep or the next Dark Tower novel:
I mentioned two potential projects while I was on the road, one a new Mid-World book (not directly about Roland Deschain, but yes, he and his friend Cuthbert are in it, hunting a skin-man, which are what werewolves are called in that lost kingdom) and a sequel to The Shining called Doctor Sleep. Are you interested in reading either of these? If so, which one turns your dials more? [We] will be counting your votes (and of course it all means nothing if the muse doesn't speak).
Voting ended on December 31, 2009, and it was revealed that Doctor Sleep received 5,861 votes, while The Wind Through the Keyhole received 5,812.
In 2011, King posted an update confirming that Doctor Sleep was in the works and that the plot included a traveling group of psychic vampires called The True Knot.
Doctor Sleep was published on September 24, 2013.
Adaptations[]
The novel was adapted into a 1980 feature film of the same name directed by Stanley Kubrick and co-written with Diane Johnson. King himself wrote the screenplay, very faithful to the novel but rejected by Kubrick. Although King himself remains disappointed with the adaptation, having criticized its handling of the book's major themes and of Wendy's character, it is regarded as one of the greatest horror films ever made. King's disdain of the film has not lessened in recent years, with his 2018 novel The Outsider even including a jab about how poorly done Kubrick's interpretation of the film is.
The novel was also later adapted into a television miniseries, which premiered in 1997 on American Broadcasting Company. Stephen King wrote and closely monitored the making of the series to ensure that it followed the novel's narrative. The miniseries garnered popular and critical acclaim, but in recent years has been received less fondly by critics compared to Kubrick's film.
In 2016, the Minnesota Opera Company staged an opera based on both the novel and the 1980 movie. The production enjoyed strong reviews and sold out performances.
Audiobook[]
The audiobook version of The Shining was read by Campbell Scott, who also read the audiobook version of Cell, Stephen King's 53rd book.
Trivia[]
- Danny's middle name is Anthony; his imaginary friend's name is Tony. This alludes to the idea that "Tony" is actually Danny as a grown up.
- In the movie based on this book, Delbert Grady is named "Charles Grady".
- Dick Hallorann appears in a flashback scene in Stephen King's novel IT.
- In the book Misery, the remains of the burnt out Overlook Hotel are referred to.
- The Shining was heavily influenced by Shirley Jackson's 1959 novel The Haunting of Hill House, Edgar Allan Poe's short stories "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839) and "The Masque of the Red Death" (1842), and Robert Marasco's 1973 novel Burnt Offerings. The story has often been compared to Guy de Maupassant's story "The Inn".
- In The Stand, the novel released after The Shining, Abagail Freemantle (Mother Abagail) says her grandmother referred to the gift of prophecy as "the shining lamp of God, sometimes just the shine.".
- Blogger Joe McClatchey mentioned reading The Shining on his "Scarecrow Joe's Rants & Raves" blog in 2009.
- The book painfully deals with many of King's recurring themes, including alcoholism, domestic violence, misfit, yet gifted children and the insanity of authors.