The Shining - Monsters also get second chances, TO HAUNT YOU!

     

    When I was a kid, I watched a movie that gave me nightmares and made me run away from every redhead girl at the local mall. That movie was Carrie. A couple of weeks later, in his infinite wisdom, my brother who is much older than me suggested that if Carrie had caused such a reaction, I should watch The Shining. Since my big brother was my ultimate superhero at the time, you can bet I followed his advice. But to his surprise, I was not amused or scared by The Shining. If I remember correctly, I even considered the movie boring.

Years passed, and I recall one long holiday weekend that I was spending alone in my college dorm room. There was nothing to do, and I ended up with a paperback of The Shining. I was on a Stephen King binge then, so I decided to give the novel a try, reminding myself that the movie had not impressed me when I had watched it years earlier. But things had significantly changed since, and I was about to walk down a very dark path into the Overlook Hotel.

While reading, I remember watching over my shoulder a couple of times to make sure the closet door in my door room remained closed. I used to read under the light of a reading lamp, but halfway through the book, with the excuse of stretching, I got up and turned the room lights on. Yes, reading the book at that time made me uncomfortable, in a way the movie did not. Then, when I had to read it again this summer, I’m not going to tell you that it scared me, but it did make me uncomfortable to read through Jack’s and Danny’s concerns and struggles with each other. But why? 

    We could discuss the differences between the movie and the book for hours, where I could argue that the book had the scariest angles. At least for me, the topiary animals coming to life beat the maze. The hornets made me read under the blankets because as we all know, blankets protect us from hornets and the monsters under the bed. Worst of all, those images of Jack chasing Wendy with that mallet were more spine-chilling (no pun intended) to me than a terminal whack with an ax could ever be. But deep inside, I don’t think all those differences matter. The real difference was that as a reader I was no longer a kid. I was a young man while reading The Shining in college, and a mature man while reading it this summer. On both occasions, I could relate to and understand the real horrors within the story of The Shining as I couldn’t when I was a kid. On the surface, The Shining is a story of a haunted hotel, but peeling into the very layered and intricate backstory of the main characters we discovered that The Shining is a story about, family.

Within the story, King portrays one of the greatest fears of every generation; Are we becoming our parents? Is a universal message that in Jack’s and Wendy’s becomes a scary one since they both come from dysfunctional families with abusive parents. Both characters then struggle with the same fears if their marriage will end up the same as their parents, or worse, are they a self-image of their mother and father respectively? But then in Jack’s scenario, we see the ante being raised with his struggle of fighting alcoholism and living with the ghost of having an abusive father. So, will he scape those demons or become them?

In this novel, King does one of the things he does best, he gives us such a powerful character arc, that we end up caring about each of these characters. From the start of the novel, we learn of Jack’s mishaps and even if you know where his journey will end, you will find yourself trying to root for him to turn down those drinks from Grady because you end up caring for Jack and the Torrance family. You end up cheering for Wendy when she breaks the bottle over his head to escape his choke.

Of course, we cannot forget about the other key characters in the story like Danny, Tony, Halloran, and even The Overlook. King also developed the arc for each of these characters. Danny obviously since he is one of the main characters, but then consider how much time he invested in developing the arc of Halloran and the backstory for the Overlook, which represented all the evil that would eventually try to harm the Torrance’s, which unfortunately we already suspected they wouldn’t make it since they didn’t have a strong family bond.  So, if there is one thing aspiring writers should take away from this novel is to work on those character arcs and backstories. Make them relatable and give them a background that binds them to the theme of your story. You will captivate your audience, and they might identify with your character’s struggles.

Although I do like the novel, in true King fashion, there were a couple of times in the story where I consider that he took the long road around the plot line. One of those examples is the sideline story of Jack and Al taking a ride on Al’s Jaguar while they are completely smashed and end up running over the bicycle at the side of the road. Although the point of the story is to show Al stops drinking, it’s a long sideline that took me out of the story. Like that one, there are others in the story.

The Shining, King’s third novel, was published in 1977. After his success with Carrie and Salem’s Lot, he had already established a fan base that was thirsty for his next release, and they welcomed his new entry into the horror genre. Both of his previous novels were set in his town of Maine, so he looked for inspiration in a new setting for his third book. Although he did find that new environment during a vacation in Colorado, we can say that he also found the comfort of a very well-known trope for horror fans, the theme of the haunted house. Horror fans love their haunted houses and King doubled up on that premise by taking a dysfunctional family and locking them into a haunted hotel in the middle of nowhere. Since then, readers all over the world have flocked to the novel to discover how the Torrance’s fair against the ghosts and their internal demons at the Overlook, a conflict that has made The Shining King’s bestselling novel within his entire collection and by far. Many critics have compared King’s success with The Shining to what Shirley Jackson had previously achieved with The Hunting of Hill House. A clear inspiration for King’s novel, but that my friends, is a topic for another Blog.