Abuse, Manipulation, and the Forever Repeating Tragedies of ‘The Shining’
The Shining differs greatly from its source novel, something that author Stephen King has talked about at length over the years — mostly because he’s been put on the spot to continuously rehash his “hot take” that he doesn’t like the film. All of the pieces are there, for the most part. It’s far from the most unfaithful adaptation in the world. It’s still about Jack Torrance, a father who takes a position as caretaker of the Overlook Hotel for the winter and brings along his wife and son. But within that set up and even a few of the same set pieces, there are so many different things that are rearranged and reinterpreted to create an adaptation that is completely different on a tonal and spiritual level.
In some ways, it absolutely misses the mark, as there’s a clear lack of understanding the heart of the source material, or even in some places what makes it scary. In other ways, it’s a fascinating all-timer of an adaptation because the approach taken by Kubrick allows both the book and film to stand as entirely separate entities. Two wildly creatively different takes on the same basic idea. The two versions are about different things. They even, in fact, have different protagonists. The Shining, the novel, is about Jack Torrance. He’s very much the main character, as writers often are in King’s works. Jack is even, in some ways, a stand-in for King himself, in ways that the author would not even really see until years later.
Jack Torrance is an recovering alcoholic, whereas King — at the time — was an alcoholic who had not quite realized his addiction, writing from a place that could be deeply freeing and personal because he didn’t even realize he was writing about himself. Everything Jack goes through in the book is about a man who wants to do well by his family, who wants to be on the straight-and-narrow and wants to be the father that he should be and that his own father had never really been, but he eventually succumbs to his demons. The novel deals with this addiction on both a blunt surface and deeply metaphorical level.
Jack’s history with alcoholism is factual backstory within the context of the book, while the power the Overlook has over him represents the ugly truth of alcoholism. The need, the voice that commands over everything else, the force that pushes you to keep going even as you see the people you love slipping away. Because of all of this, Jack of the book is a deeply sympathetic character.
That’s not as much the case in the movie, but it’s also easier for the film to get away with that because in Kubrick’s The Shining, Jack isn’t the protagonist. His wife, Wendy, is. Wendy’s the emotional anchor, she’s the one aware that things are wrong, partially because — like Jack’s rage — that’s something she’s already bringing to the table by the time the film begins. Wendy is aware, but she is literally an abused housewife, a woman whose voice has been suffocated and silenced, and her arc over the course of the film is about finding that voice again.
That’s a natural shift in perspective given the changes to the source material. When Jack is a villain from the beginning, it naturally becomes a film about a woman who both eventually admits the monster her husband is and has potentially always been, and then realizes that she is locked in with him and must find a way out of this situation to save the life of herself and her child.
Kubrick rearranges several elements of the novel, but the most striking and most prominent are his shift in character and theme. As many, many people are quick to point out, Jack is much more unhinged in the film than he is in the novel, but thematically that feels like the point. The movie isn’t about a man struggling against his own addiction, at least not nearly as much as the book. Instead, the film shifts that gaze to focus on the story of a wife in peril. A woman who already knows what kind of man her husband is, but won’t necessarily let herself believe it. Even without the ghosts, this is a slowly building nightmare about a woman realizing exactly the kind of man her husband is, and subsequently begins planning her escape.
In the novel, the Overlook Hotel seeks to corrupt a good man, to exploit his vices, insecurities and weakness, to turn him against his own family. The film’s approach is very different. Here, Jack is an instrument, ready and willing to be used. The Overlook is a hungry, evil entity with no human form of its own. It can make you see any number of horrible nightmares, but it can’t actually act on its own accord, it has no physical body. It needs someone to do that. Before, it was Delbert Grady, who murdered his whole family while he was caretaker. Now, it’s Jack’s turn to do the same. Jack’s willingness to do this is what makes him so terrifying, and it’s also laid out spectacularly in the beginning of the film.
There’s a scene in the car, on their way to the hotel, where Jack is already clearly tense, almost mocking Danny and Wendy with his tone. In this scene, they talk about the Donner Party, Danny asserts his knowledge of cannibalism, while also asking why those people “ate each other up.” Jack tells him that they did what they had to do to survive. That one line concretely establishes his mindset for the rest of the film.
It’s him versus them. In Jack’s mind, Danny and Wendy are the obstacles in his life, and they are obstacles that need to be removed. They need to be corrected. They stand in the way of his alcoholism, they stand in the way of his writing career, they stand in the way of his freedom. It may not be a concrete conscious thought, but it’s in there. He’s thinking about killing them long before he ever sets foot in the hotel.
In the book, Jack is deeply guilty about breaking Danny’s arm as a toddler. In the film, Jack never really expresses an ounce of guilt, only persistent justification to Lloyd, the bartender, who is of course simply an avatar for the hotel itself. There’s a smile on Lloyd’s face throughout that entire story as Jack relays it with excuse after excuse. This is a pathetic man. There’s no remorse here, and if there is, it’s buried somewhere so deep he’ll never let himself find it. That’s the moment the hotel knows, beyond a doubt, that it can use him, and that he will gleefully and willingly let himself be used.
Much has been made about the final shot of The Shining, depicting Jack at the Overlook’s New Year’s Ball in 1921. To me, it’s exactly as Grady said, he’s always been here, metaphorically. The man the hotel made of him, the man who died there and is now among the ghosts, is exactly the same man he’s always been. It means every ounce of promise was wasted, and he never made anything more out of his life than being the monster who made his wife walk on eggshells, battered his son, and for whom the hotel hungered in the first place.
It’s the very reason the credits roll backwards at the beginning of the film. Everything that will happen has already happened. Every scream, every murder, is an act being repeated without end. That is the very nature of a haunted house.
