The Shining

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Summary: Facing the Fears of their Past
Review: Stephen King is no doubt a hugely successful writer, however he is not often recognized an author with skills that reach beyond his genre. In The Shining, Stephen King shows more than just his ability to make you sleep with your lights on. I am the first to admit that The Shining is by far one of the scariest novels I have ever read, but what adds to its greatness is ability to operate on many levels. The novel leaves the reader completely satisfied with a good scare and a pertinent story. The novel focuses on the Torrance family. Jack, the father, is writer with a temper who recently lost his job. Jack has been sober for almost a year and he is offered a job to take care of a hotel in Colorado in its off season. The family, along with his wife Wendy and their son Danny who has a very special gift, look at the job as an opportunity to regroup and get Jack writing going. Danny has a gift that allows him to see things that are going to happen in the future and sense things that most people can't. His gift gets a name eventually and is called the shining. The novel is structured in a five-act play type of format and the action never ceases with every turn of the page. In contrast to the film, which is successful in its own right, the novel doesn't focus on Jack (played by Jack Nicholson in the film) as the antagonist, but rather the conflict comes with the hotel versus the entire Torrance family. In order for the family to move on they must face the horrible things in their past. The hotel as they find out has a past and the family experiences unimaginable terror as they are stranded in the hotel during the harsh Colorado winter. Jack develops a fascination with the hotel and becomes more and more interested in history darker history. The Hotel uses Jack as instrument to get to Danny. The only thing they can't help the Torrance family is binding to together and facing the Hotel's past as well as their own. The setting, as usual, shows King's mastery at picking places that we all might have had a fear of from time to time. On another level the choice of the hotel is perfect in trying to represent a place that could have an amazing past. Any number of things could happen in a hotel because of different kinds of people that could have inhabited its rooms. King also establish rich characters and as Jack Torrance gets to his brink you fear and feel sympathy for him at the same time. Stephen King has not only mastered his craft in fear but he takes this novel a step further by having a family face their own past. Everyone has something that haunts them in their past and the only way to find out if the Torrance family is successful conquering theirs is to face your own fears and read this book.

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Summary: Transcending the ghost story genre
Review: Steven King's novel "The Shining," delivers a bone-chilling ghost story in which a haunted hotel tests a families ability to overcome their past. King utilizes the conventions of the ghost story genre in order to serve different thematic functions.

It is easy to read this novel on a purely dramatic level. After all, "The Shining" is marketed as a book that is sure to "curl your hair and chill your blood." Although these promises of terror are fulfilled, King provides many opportunities for the reader to delve deeper- to move beyond his dramatic choices and examine the thematic issues that haunt the characters in the novel.

"The Shining" addresses the cyclical nature of history. History never fades: it surrounds the characters, forms their identities, and shapes their behavior. Jack's past is plagued by alcoholism, violence, and the memories of an abusive, alcoholic father. Wendy, Jack's wife, is desperately afraid of becoming her mother. She has come close to leaving Jack because of his violent behavior, but has stuck with the marriage. Clearly this is a family that has had a tragic and shaky past, but a past they have learned to survive thus far.

In Chapter One, King sets up the concept of history as manipulatable. Ullman is aware of Jack's violent past, and uses this knowledge to place him in a position of power over Jack. History holds a certain power for every character in the novel, but it is a power that can be fatal if not used correctly. Danny's unique gift: the ability to "shine," allows him to see events that have occurred in the past, and may occur in the future. This power places Danny, at times, at a disadvantage because of his youth and inexperience. Danny feels very alone, in that he cannot tell his parents about his visions, or his imaginary friend "Tony" who guides him through these glimpses into a possible future. Upon finding the hotel scrapbook filled with scandalous information concerning the hotel's secret past, Jack feels empowered to use the information to write the great American novel. Jack is so involved in the hotel's history that his own past begins to resurface: his familiar twitch, his craving for alcohol, his violent behavior. And what seems to be the catalyst for the resurfacing past? The Overlook Hotel. The very place Jack seeks comfort, focus, and isolation becomes his undoing. The Overlook not only isolates the Torrance's from society, it strives to isolate them from each other. The power of the family unit is thus tested. When the Torrance's are separated, they are vulnerable to both the Overlook's past, and their own. A recognition of the past is crucial for progression, yet this recognition can be abused (as in the situation with Ullman). If repressed, the past will most definitely come back to haunt. King inserts italicized phrases throughout the novel that function on a psychological level as indications of the repressed past, thoughts, or warnings. When Jack "unknowingly" sets the timer ahead during Hatfield's speech, the results, on a thematic level, are profound. This repressed past resurfaces when Jack yells at Danny to stop stuttering. The cyclical nature of history is also apparent in this novel's racial undertones. Doc's race works, both for and against him when he tries overcoming the challenges that keep him from traveling to the Overlook.

King structures this novel in five parts, referring to the Shakespearian Five Act Structure. Is it no surprise then that King manipulates this historical structure in an unconventional manner, placing the Inciting incident in the third section and pairing the crisis and resolution in part five. King transcends the ghost story genre to meet his own thematic needs. The thematic levels that underlie King's dramatic choices make this novel more intense and real than any suspense story I have ever read.

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Summary: Don't Overlook the Shining
Review: The hotel is called the Overlook. I'll explain the joke in a minute.

Stephen King--literary master? Thematic genius? No, no, stick with this review. I swear, he is. It is very easy to overlook the thematic depth to this novel--in fact, I would pose that he wrote this book as a suspense because, well, he's good at suspense, but also because we can easily ignore important clues when we are not aware of them. Would you have read "The Shining" for literary themes unless someone told you to look for them? Whatever, ....

Jack, Wendy, and their son Danny are set to spend a winter and spring in The Overlook Hotel in remote Colorado as caretaker and family. This family, though, has a complicated and dark history, a history about as dark and complicated as the hotel itself. We understand, going into the hotel, that Jack is a troubled man, a recovering alcoholic still yearning for the drink with a violent temper. Wendy lives in fear of becoming her mother. And Danny—Danny possess a gift, a shining, kind of like ESP or second sight or sixth sense-ish stuff. He can see dead people. It’s not good. Neither is the hotel; as its sordid history unfurls, the reader realizes that the Torrance family is a pawn. The question is, does the pawn know about the game and can it win?

But the book is not thrills and chills, scares and dead bodies. It is more complicated than that, but it an aspect that most people overlook (hint!). King is speaking to the importance of history, the complex contexts that guide our lives—and the harmful implications of overlooking (hint!) that history. Just like many people disregard a literary effort by King, so too can most reader fail too the complexity within this novel. I must be frank—I did. If I wasn’t taking an English lit class, I would have simply read this book as a scary, cool suspense novel. I would not have seen the depth or the significance of the context and layers King deftly places in this book. How easy we forget.

Moreover, each character’s action is justified and valid. This is a rich and justified character study; Jack, even when he is at his most crazed, still has elements of humanity that ground him in reasonability. In other words, this book never spins to such an outlandish degree that we disregard the truth. These characters could exist, they could be your neighbors. And that is what the most successful element of suspense within this novel is—it is believable. And in its believability, it gains a new level of tautness. If these were chariactures, why would we care? Also, the events are suspenseful on their own—Dick’s return is littered with mundane events that create a nail-biting effect. King is the master of detail. But you miss one—you’ve overlooked it all.

I highly recommend this novel--not only as a "don't read at bedtime" chiller, but as a strong exploration of Santayana's creed: the importance of understanding history or living with its ... consequences.

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Summary: Overlooking History
Review: Having first seen only the 1980 Stanley Kubrick version of The Shining and the Simpsons satire, I was uncertain what to expect of the original novel. Upon beginning my reading, I now understand why Stephen King was so disappointed with the movie. The pages of this bestseller are laced with more depth and strong characterization than found on the movie screen. The Shining is worthy of much critical praise as well as from lovers of the genre. The plot of this novel is familiar to many. The Torrance family begins the novel about to spend the winter at the Overlook Hotel. Jack Torrance, an educated, published professional, has lost his job at a prestigious private school when in a fit of violent anger he blacks out and beats a student. The Torrances have had a colorful history, with Jack as a violent, recovering alcoholic who once broke his son's arm in a fit of rage, Wendy as the product of a broken home and a vicious, controlling mother, and Danny as a young child who has the shining, which is akin to ESP or other psychic ability. This family, with their history and expansive characterizations, interested in staying together and persevering, is the driving opposition to the Overlook Hotel, with its equally weighty history and rooms full of "people" interested in consuming this family. In the first part, King frames a perfect picture of this conflict with the Torrances on the porch in almost a family picture, set against the Overlook Hotel.

Stephen King selected a genre that suggested his thematic pursuits. By selecting a ghost story, King could deal with absolving missteps in history, the weight of historical events today, the cyclical patterns of history, and inter-personal dynamics among those being haunted. Though King has suffered critical disdain as a "genre writer," until the appearance of The Green Mile, this was perhaps the only reasonable dramatic choice he could have made in pursuit of his themes. Selecting romance or science fiction or western, or even a regular adult fiction would not have accomplished the same ends.

The dramatic choices are not only interesting; they are useful to the novel. Rather than his original idea to set this book in an amusement park, King selects an old hotel, ripe with many individual histories in each room. The cycles of the Overlook have repeated themselves, the murder rampages, suicides, and attacks, every year. In fact, another caretaker's family suffered the same potential fate of the Torrances the last winter. Likewise, the Torrance family has its own cycles, which they have thus far continued, to break (Jack's father's violence and alcoholism, Wendy's mother's tendency to criticize her husband and controlling habits). The characterizations are interesting, give the story depth, and also reflect the ideas of the cyclical nature of history.

Stephen King has not always produced stellar literary works, but The Shining deserves an honored place in the modern literary canon. The Torrances are written to keep the reader turning the pages as they battle the forces of the Overlook, including cycles of American history, hotel history and their own cycle of family history, yet the dramatic choices are thoughtful enough to evoke thematic concerns that reverberate within the reader. The Shining is not just a thriller or a genre book. It utilizes this resource and then transcends the boundaries. To literary fans, to fans of the movie, to all readers who appreciate both dramatic and thematic dexterity I recommend The Shining.

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Summary: The Shining - A Thrilling Masterpiece
Review: When most readers hear the name Stephen King, they often thing of a genre or horror writer. The Shining proves that Stephen King is more than that, that beyond the intense and terrifying scenes of psychological rage (COME TAKE YOUR MEDICINE! COME TAKE IT LIKE A MAN!) and ghostly images of decades past (after reading this, you will never stay in Room 217 of ANY hotel) there is a disturbing portrayal of an American Family and a very philosophical comment on the role of history in our lives.

What happens when a man and his family are locked in a giant hotel miles from civilization for an entire winter? What if the hotel were haunted, and he was a reformed abusive alcoholic? The beginning of the novel sets these questions up with magestic style.

The outcome is the disturbing tale of Jack, the caretaker, being brainwashed by the haunted Overlook Hotel. Can he fight the voices telling him to kill his wife and son? Delbert Grady, a past caretaker, could not when he chopped up his family with an axe. And Delbert is only one of many of the "residues" of the past. The past at the Overlook is also the present and future. The same party happens over and over in the ballroom. Lloyd is always ready to bartend if Jack just really needs a drink.

The Shining is also a comment on how children are like their parents. Notice the similarity between Danny and Daddy - Jack is a writer, while Danny is obsessed with reading. When Danny is catatonic, Jack gives him some cherry to calm him down (Didn't Jack used to do the same?). What Jack doesn't understand is that sons do not have to be like their fathers.

If you want a book that tenses your every muscle and something to think about, try The Shining. It won't dissapoint you.

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Summary: A tough choice
Review: I am a big Stephen King fan, and I read most of his work. Of everything I have read such far, I enjoyed "'Salem's Lot" the best, but had a tough decision deciding whether or not "The Shining" was better...in the end, "'Salem's Lot" received five stars, and "The Shining" four...here's why:

I read "The Shining" in three days. It was a quick read for me, mainly because I got into the story and it never let up. I did the same with "'Salem's Lot", but I found that throughout this book, it got slightly annoying when paragraphs were suddenly broken with thoughts, then continued...I had to go back to remember what they were talking about before the break occurred. This, for me, slowed the pace, but I eventually didn't mind as the book went on.

"The Shining" was filled with believable characters that I could get to know. Jack really seemed like an alcoholic when he got angry, but you could also the good side to him...I wasn't sure whether I wanted to hate him or like him. That caused a lot of conflict that I enjoyed. As for Wendy and Danny, I felt connected with him. Though I am 15 years old, I can remember being five, thinking things like, "It's not a sweet, it's a suite."

King wrote this book beautifully, and I can see why it is such a classic. This is easily one of the best books I have ever read, and I will never forget it...but maybe being so popular has taken away from it. Before even starting, I knew that REDRUM was MURDER, so that took away some of the shock when it was finally revealed.

"The Shining" is truly a great book that you must read. I loved it, and will eventually reread it one day...I can't say enough about it. But there were only a few things that took away from it...I already knew a lot about it before I started, whereas with other books, it was a shock. If you liked "'Salem's Lot", you will love "The Shining". Personally, I don't feel the ending was a letdown...I enjoyed it and felt satisfied. Read this book. That's all I can say!!! (It's the best Easter present I've ever gotten!)

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Summary: Thematic Concerns in Stephen King's The Shining
Review: First, let me start by saying The Shining is a fantastic read. You will be emotionally stimulated by this suspenseful portrayal of the Torrance family and their battle for survival.

This novel explores the concept of history as a cyclical force; king is asserting that people have the ability to manipulate history and to forget or "overlook" its cyclical presence. The Shining documents the struggle that results from individuals that perform both of these actions. Stephen King uses the conventions of a ghost story to dramatize his themes. The forgotten past that is haunting the family in the present is represented by the Overlook Hotel itself. The Hotel personifies the cyclical force that is threatening to first, isolate the family from the rest of the world and eventually from each other, and to then completely destroy the family unit. The focus of the Hotel's motivation lies in Danny, the young boy (only child of Jack and Wendy) who possesses a gift - the shining - that allows him to see things both in the past and the future. The Hotel, the aggressor in the conflict, desires this gift in order to ensure everlasting life; to ensure its history will live forever. (Of course the Hotel itself is "overlooking" that it is the nature of history that makes it live on forever - its cyclical nature). The ensuing rising action details the Torrance family's struggle to overcome the Hotel's opposition on a dramatic level and to overcome their desire to ignore their history repeating itself in the present on a thematic level.

Unfortunately,the dramatic reading is stressed in the marketing of this novel and, as a result, is usually the only level perceived by its readers. This misconception is not helped by Stanley Kubrick's film that is an inaccurate adaptation of the novel. Kubrick's film, though creatively successful, fails to portray King's thematic intentions; Stephen King only used the ghost story conventions on which the film is based as a toll to dramatize his themes. These conventions drive the reader through the novel by constantly building suspense. Therefore, placing this novel strictly in a genre category would be a slight to King's intentions and a disgraceful attempt at critical reading. A careful reader will identify both the dramatic and thematic lines of narrative in this literary work.

For those who have difficulty reading The Shining thematically, look closely at structure. This novel is divided into a 5-act structure. However, King does not strictly follow the conventions of this structure. The first two acts are devoted to exposition; the third act contains more exposition, the inciting incident and the start of the rising action; the fourth act continues the suspenseful rising action; the fifth act concludes the rising action witht the crisis moment, the falling action and the resolution.

Critically reading this novel entails picking up all of the evidence King carefully provides and correctly identifying the inciting incident and the main conflict, dramatically and thematically. The novel is saturated with the theme of cyclical history. In fact, even before the novel begins, King informs us of this theme and its consequences with the excerpt from Edgar Allen Poe's The Masque of the Red Death. He continues with countless passages about the Torrance family history, the Overlook Hotel's history, American history (the prejudice and racism involving women, homosexuals and blacks), and the history of the various relationships in the novel.

king brilliantly demonstrates how easily history is manipulated via its varying descriptions by different voices in the novel. For example, the Overlook Hotel's history is shown in many different lights, including both Ullman's praising, biased view and the scrapbook's negatively revealing view. Also, the concept of the memory of history, individual's own recollections of history, being unreliable is found throughout the novel.

Thus, through careful consideration, is should be impossible to critically collect this evidence and not come up with the ambitious thematic reading King is asserting in The Shining.

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Summary: Cycles of History at the Overlook Hotel
Review: King's novel "The Shining" deserves much more credit than it is usually awarded. Because of King's fame and the generalities made about all his work, "The Shining" is often considered a thriller, which is a lacking description indeed. Although in some ways the novel is a thirller, as many scenes force the reader to white-knuckle the arm of his or her chair, there is much more depth and significant thematic content in this novel than one typically expects a thriller to have. As he has been known to do, King uses a writer as one of arguably two main characters, and also draws from his personal experiences. King originally wanted to set this novel in an amusement park, but after a vacation to a resort hotel in Colorado, decided that a hotel setting would be much more successful in furthering the thematic content he planned to deal with. King relates the story of a family in trouble, attempting what may be a last ditch effort to remain whole. The father, Jack, is an alcoholic haunted by the abuse of his own father, who is prone to violenbt outbursts. Danny, the son, is a six-year-old boy blessed (or cursed) with he gift of E.S.P., or the shining, enabling him to read thoughts and see possible future events through his imaginary friend Tony. The mother, Wendy, also struggling with her past, is concerned about her son's abnormalities and her husband's unpredictablity. An old drinking buddy of Jack's is able to get him a job at the hotel he largely owns, as the winter caretaker. In this manner King introduces the novel's central conflict, the Overlook vs. The Torrance family. Much of the enjoyment of reading the novel comes from the play of these two forces against one another, which King has intelligently enpowered similarly. The Torrances are empowered by Danny's gift, Jack's love, and Wendy's spirit. The Overlook is empowered by the ghosts of those who have died there in the past, who want to keep the timeless party alive. This dramatization helps the reader understand the thematic content concerning cycles of history, which is perhaps the most significant of King's themes. All the characters, and in many ways the Overlook can be considered a character, have history. Much of the suspense of the novel stems from whether the character's histories will be repeated, or if they will be strong enough to overcome their past. Jack's history is full of alcoholism and abuse, Wendy's is dominated by her uncaring mother and her mistrust of Jack, and the Overlook's history is one of terrible violence and sadness, such a powerful force that it comes to life. The importance of history is clearly dramatized as the family is just experiencing total isolation, when Jack wanders to the basement and becomes fascinated with an old scrapbook detailing the seedy past of the hotel, such as the years when it was run by mobsters. He decides the papers in the basement would make an excellent footing for a great American novel. As his excitement about how good the novel could be grows, hope is lost when Al, who got him the job, refuses to let him tarnish the image of the hotel by writing about it. This event helps set Jack's temper in motion, and also dramatizes another significant thematic concern of King's, that of the abuse of power. People in the novel in positions of power tend to abuse that power, a fact revealed through many thematic choices, including: Jack's father's abuse, the mistreatment of Jack by the hotel manager, Al's denial of the book, the seemingly unstoppable power of the real "Manager," the dark force of the hotel itself, and Jack's abuse of his family. Organized cleverly into a classic five act structure, "The Shining" is truly one of King's greatest literary achievements. I recommend the novel for it's level of suspense, (prepare to be occasionally horrified) it's believable characters, riveting plot, and central thematic messages concerning cylces of history, and the abuse of power.

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Summary: THE BEST!!!
Review: The first book that I have read from Stephen King, but certainly not my last! All of the boos that I have read from him (IT, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, The Stand) were als 5 star ratings, but The Shining is my favorite of them all!

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Summary: Best. Book. Ever.
Review: Quite simply, by far the best horror book I ever read, bar none. From the slow, methodical, foreshadowing beginning, through the increasingly scary and insightful median, and right up to the intense, explosive ending, this book creeps like no other. Characterization is excellent, and the pace is good, considering what it has to build up to. If you saw the Kubrick-slaughtered movie, you MUST read this, for it will give you ten times the insight. King's best work by far.