This conflict calls into question the role of fatalism versus free will in the film, as Jack seems both destined to be driven mad by the hotel and predisposed to go mad of his own troubled volition.

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The threat of "cabin fever" is mentioned explicitly when Mr. Ullman warns Jack that the job for which he is interviewing is "mentally isolating," a quality that precipitated the 1970 Grady murders.

She is jealous that she doesn’t have the same connection with Danny that Jack does, and she often feels like an “outsider.” At the hotel, however, they can’t exclude her; their living quarters are much too close, which forces them to be together as a family. Struggling with distance learning? Danny was “born with a caul”—a thin membrane covering the face and eyes at birth that is often associated with “second sight” and other physic gifts—and this is how Danny’s mother, Wendy, explains her son’s rather unsettling abilities. In one scene, Wendy and Danny explore the hedge maze while Jack, one half benevolent father and one half bully, towers over its scale model in the hotel lobby, watching tiny versions of his wife and child walk further into the maze, hinting at their impending separation. This exchange provides the foundation for the essential conflict of the film: whether Jack will use this seclusion to provide for his family or let it infect his brain and prompt him to kill his family.

In the final sequence of the film, this same maze, once surveilled by domineering Jack, entraps and distances him from his family forever.

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Kubrick pokes holes in such a fantasy throughout the film, however. But in sleep she did believe them, and in sleep, with her husband’s seed still drying on her thighs, she felt that the three of them had been permanently welded together—that if their three/oneness was to be destroyed, it would not be destroyed by any of them but from outside. By Stephen King. Whatever Redrum was, it was here. Jack disrupts the geometry of these murals when he throws a tennis ball against them, perhaps upsetting the spirits of the buried Native Americans that Mr. Ullman mentions early in the film and unleashing their supernatural revenge.

Notably, Jack is unable to find his way out of this highly ordered environment at the close of the film, too insane to make sense of its ordered twists and turns, whereas Danny, still rooted in sanity, easily extricates himself and escapes into the arms of his mother. The novel’s protagonist, five-year-old Danny Torrance, has psychic abilities, and the Overlook Hotel—where Danny’s father, Jack, is the winter caretaker—is full of unexplained occurrences and spirits of the past, keeping the Torrances in a constant state of fear. Stephen King was born the second son of Nellie Ruth Pillsbury and Donald Edwin King, a merchant seaman, in Portland, Maine, in 1947. Even though Wendy and her mother have a difficult past, Wendy still makes a point to be in her mother’s life, and she includes Danny in her life as well.

He knew. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Shining by Stanley Kubrick.

Little by little a force had accrued, as secret and silent as interest in a bank account.

"My students can't get enough of your charts and their results have gone through the roof." Very wise of you, sir.

Despite their past struggles, the Torrance family is looking forward to their time together at the Overlook Hotel, and initially, it appears as if the hotel will help heal their family unit. By using our site, you acknowledge that you have read and understand our. The Shining (1977 Novel) essays are academic essays for citation. With the depiction of these tortured families in The Shining, King exposes the vulnerabilities and weaknesses of families; however, King also highlights the potential strength of the family unit and ultimately asserts that the connection within a family can never be completely broken. The breakdown of the nuclear family unit is a theme that underlies much of The Shining's conflict. When asked by his girlfriend about the subject of a book he is writing, Ben Mears, the protagonist of King's Salem 's Lot (1975), replies: "Essentially, it's about the recurrent power of evil." The film begins on careening shots of the windy mountain roads that lead up to the Overlook, dramatizing its extreme isolation from the modern, urban world. Jack’s Crisis: What Role Did Narcissistic Injury and Cultural Circumstance Play in Jack’s Breakdown?

From a distance, the Torrance family is the picture of a classic American family. From the creators of SparkNotes, something better. Jack is a recovering alcoholic with a history of abuse, and he has recently lost his job, bringing the additional stress of financial insecurity to his already-struggling family. Wendy is forced to come to grips with the hotel's confusing geography when she runs through the hotel at the film's close, disoriented by the winding staircases and hallways peopled with ghosts.

Firmly situated in the working class, Jack begins the film unemployed, and we meet him at a job interview. "My students can't get enough of your charts and their results have gone through the roof."

Throughout the film, Jack treats his wife, Wendy, as a force threatening to disrupt the success and fortune he seeks. resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

This occurs in proportion to Jack's fascination with the hotel's "good old days," when the Gold Room's stylish parties gave the hotel its luxurious reputation.

When Jack Torrance is gets a job as the winter caretaker at the Overlook Hotel, he learns about Grady, the previous caretaker, who went insane and murdered his family before committing suicide. Addiction to alcohol and drugs can also be interpreted as forms of isolation and entrapment and so the living conditions within the Overlook serve to become a commentary upon the nature of addiction and the powerfully conflicting urges to give in and fight off those illicit desires. The isolation is “exactly” what they need—“a season together away from the world, a sort of family honeymoon.” This much-needed time alone offers the Torrances a chance to reconnect as a family without outside distraction.

At the center of the novel is the Torrance family— Jack, Wendy, and Danny —and they are fighting considerable odds.

The novel explores themes associated with the consequences of addiction using Jack’s alcoholism merely as a starting point. His father left when he was just a toddler, and his mother raised King and his brother alone. Instead of refusing to see his father or cursing him, Jack continues to foster a relationship with him, which again implies that the basic familial bond is difficult to break. Stephen King's body of work can be read as a study of good and evil.

As the number 2 rose on the shaft wall, he threw the brass handle back to the home position and the elevator car creaked to a stop. Throughout the film, writing serves as an expression of Jack's—and by extension, the hotel's—descent into madness.

“Run away. This conclusion is supported by the increasingly real presence of the hotel's ghosts, beginning with Jack's first encounter with Lloyd, the Gold Room bartender of yore, and culminating in Wendy's romp through the hotel at the end of the film, wherein she finally sees what Jack and Danny have seen throughout the film: the hotel's partying skeletons, the Grady twins, and the bloody elevator. LitCharts Teacher Editions. Grady had been an alcoholic, the hotel’s manager, Mr. Ullman, tells Jack, and the tragedy “came as a result of too much…, While it is certainly a lesser theme in the novel, time nevertheless plays an important role in Stephen King’s The Shining. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Shining (1977 Novel) by Stephen King. The hotel's hedge maze, as well as the fragmented nature of the hotel itself, play a symbolic role in this sense of isolation, as it represents a literal danger of getting lost and losing connection with the outside world. By using our site, you acknowledge that you have read and understand our, read analysis of Fear, the Paranormal, and Reality, read analysis of Precognition, Second Sight, and the Shining. This is particularly in play during Jack's visits to the hotel's Gold Room, where he drinks on the house and fits in with the guests in formal attire even though he wears a casual jacket. Your introductory section should set out how you will approach the work.

An editor And he kept wanting to take it out on Wendy and Danny.

He took his Excedrin from his pocket, shook three of them into his hand, and opened the elevator door. GradeSaver "The Shining Themes". Despite Wendy's ambition to keep her family together, the resentment that Jack harbors towards her and Danny gradually emerges as a threat to their very lives. (including. Not affiliated with Harvard College. His hands shook. Even the last shot of the film, depicting the picture of a bygone party (with Jack in attendance) thrown at the hotel, uses text as a means of complicating reality by tilting down to reveal the date on the picture: July 4th Ball, 1921.

Sexton, Timothy.

The Shining: Theme Wheel. Jack is a recovering alcoholic with a history of abuse, and he has recently lost his job, bringing the additional stress of financial insecurity to his already-struggling family. The Shining ; Themes; Study Guide. Upon closer examination, however, the Torrances' family life is rife with resentment and fear, revolving principally around Jack's insecurity about his future as a writer and his authority as a provider.

. It was here. Early in the novel, the Torrances indeed appear to be healing, and Wendy says it is the happiest their family has ever been.

The last winter caretaker, a man named Grady, was driven insane by the hotel and killed his entire family and himself—and the evil hotel is intent on doing the same thing to Jack and his family. Navigation.

These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community.

They're like having in-class notes for every discussion!”, “This is absolutely THE best teacher resource I have ever purchased.

Jack may have always been the caretaker, but that does not necessarily mean he is the right man for the job. this section. Brief Biography of Stephen King. resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel. That he will follow the latter path is foreshadowed when Wendy brings up the Donner Party during the family's drive to the hotel. for Jack’s sake.

Even so, he asserts that his real profession is writing, suggesting an ambition to climb the social ladder and gain prestige.

This is embodied in the visions that Danny and Jack have of the hotel's various ghosts, as the various members of the Grady family never appear together, but rather in disparate pockets of the hotel. They're like having in-class notes for every discussion!”, “This is absolutely THE best teacher resource I have ever purchased. This idea is likewise present in Wendy's increasing desperation as she tries to hold her nuclear family together.

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