Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Shining, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Fear, the Paranormal, and Reality
Precognition, Second Sight, and the Shining
Family
Isolation and Insanity
Alcoholism and Abuse
Time
Summary
Analysis
As Wendy knits, her eyes grow heavy, and she begins to fall asleep at the exact moment Danny meets the ghost of room 217. Wendy sleeps deeply and does not dream. At the same time, Jack falls asleep in the basement, but his slumber is light and full of vivid dreams.
In this passage, Torrance family’s separation throughout the hotel underscores the fact that although they are a family, all three of them experience a sense of isolation in their experiences at the Overlook.
Themes
When Jack begins to grow sleepy, he is going through the boxes in the basement like someone feeling around a strange room for a light switch. He accepts that Al doesn’t want him to write a book about the hotel, and he believes his experience with the animal topiaries is his brain’s way of rejecting Al’s “high-handed request” that he abandon his idea of writing the book. Jack decided to write the book anyway, even if it costs him his friendship with Al. He will call the book Strange Resort: The Story of the Overlook Hotel, and he won’t write it to get back at Al, Ullman, George Hatfield, or his father. He will write the hotel’s biography because the Overlook wants him to.
The fact that Jack goes through the boxes like someone feeling for a light switch suggests that he knows what he’s looking for, or at least that he will know it when he finds it. Jack is beginning to become one with the Overlook, and he doesn’t think that Al—one of the Overlook’s owners—has any right to tell him what to do concerning the hotel. The Overlook is very clearly influencing Jack and leading him to insanity, especially since he is willing to throw away his friendship with Al to continue researching.
Themes
As Jack sleeps, the papers he is reading slip from his hand, and he is transported to dreams of his father, a rather large male nurse. Jack’s father would call Jack weak and then hit him in the mouth and laugh hysterically. Still, he had been kind to Jack, too, and spent hours playing the elevator game with him. He would throw Jack in the air, and Jack would yell: “Elevator! Elevator!” Jack was young when he realized his siblings hated their father and that his mother only stayed because her Catholic religion demanded it. Jack’s own love for his father began to suffer after his father savagely beat his mother with his cane for no reason at all. “Now. Now by Christ,” Jack’s father had said to his mother, “I guess you’ll take your medicine now.”
Jack’s history with his father lends tremendous insight into his own struggles with alcoholism and abuse. Jack’s father abused him, just as Jack has a history of abusing Danny. Like Danny, Jack loved his father, despite the abuse, which again hearkens to the deep connection of family. Jack’s father, a male nurse, referred to his own abuse as “medicine”—something his family needs that is also good for them. The elevator game Jack played with his father also has important implications, as Wendy is deathly afraid of the hotel’s elevator.
Themes
Jack’s father hit his mother exactly seven times with his cane, and then he said she fell down the stairs and took her to the same hospital where he worked. After Jack’s father, who was also an alcoholic, died, he left plenty of insurance money, and Jack and his mother felt almost rich. As Jack sleeps and dreams, he stands and goes upstairs to Ullman’s office and flips on the CB radio. His father’s voice comes through the speaker. “You have to kill him, Jacky, and her, too,” his father’s voice says. “No! You’re dead, you’re in your grave, you’re not in me at all!” Jack screams and smashes the CB.
When Jack smashes the CB radio, he further isolates the family inside the hotel. Since the phones are down, the CB is the only way they can call for help, but Jack eliminates this as well. Jack is afraid of turning into his father, reflected in his claim that his father is “not in [Jack] at all.” Of course, Jack is like his father, and his alcoholism and abusive nature suggests this.
Themes
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Wendy wakes to the sounds of Jack’s screams and runs down the hall just after he smashes the CB radio. “Jack? Jack!” she yells, snapping him out of his light sleep. He looks down at the broken and mangled radio. Now, the snowmobile in the shed is their only access to the outside world. Jack can feel a headache coming on.
When Jack smashes the CB, further cutting off his family from the outside world, he is sleepwalking and under the influence of the hotel. Jack feels a headache coming on because, presumably, he is under strain as he fights between the Overlook’s influence and his innate instinct to protect his family. This hearkens back to Wendy’s claim that her family can only be destroyed by an outside force—Jack will not do it on his own.
Themes
