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
Danny tells Jack and Wendy all about the topiaries, but he doesn’t tell them about the cement ring. He isn’t exactly sure how to explain it, anyway. Jack builds a big fire in the fireplace, and Danny sits sipping hot soup from a mug. As Danny finishes telling his story, he worries again about men in white jackets. Jack stands at one of the lobby’s large windows and tells Danny to stand next to him. Danny looks out the window, and Jack asks what he sees. Only his own tracks, Danny says. Exactly, confirms Jack. Nothing happened out there; it was all just one of Danny’s trances.
Danny worries about the men in white jackets (like the ones who came to take his friend’s father away) because he fears he is going insane. Given that a large lion shrub has just attacked him, a mental breakdown seems only reasonable. Jack knows Danny isn’t going crazy because of his own experience with the topiaries, but he explicitly tells Danny it was all in his head. Like he does with Wendy, Jack lets Danny suffer and think he is crazy—a particularly cruel thing to do to a child.
Themes
Wendy objects to Jack’s questioning of Danny, but Jack says he is only helping Danny distinguish reality from hallucination. Jack insists that Danny cut his leg on the crust of the snow or the porch. Danny starts to say that even Jack had an experience with the animal topiaries, but Jack slaps him, cutting Danny off midsentence. Wendy screams at Jack, and grabs Danny’s arm. Wendy and Jack pull Danny back and forth until he screams for them to stop. A pine knot explodes in the fireplace, sounding like a gunshot.
At this point, the entire Torrance family is falling apart, and the hotel is winning. Jack is completely abusive of Danny here, both physically and mentally. He further tortures Danny by letting him believe he is insane, and then Jack strikes him. Wendy and Jack both tugging at Danny is the ultimate display of their mutual jealousy, and Danny is literally stuck in the middle.
Themes
Later, as Wendy and Jack tuck Danny into bed, Wendy apologizes to Jack. But, she says, Jack should not have hit Danny and promised that he never would again. She says that when the ranger comes, they are all going down the mountain, and Jack agrees. He hopes that Wendy will ask about the animal topiaries, so that he can tell her everything—the animal hedges, the ghost of room 217, the firehose—but she doesn’t ask.
Here, Jack has a moment of weakness where he almost tells Wendy everything. Notably, Jack has this tender moment, in which he tries to come through his hotel-induced insanity, when he is tucking Danny into bed. Again, it seems to be Jack’s love for Danny and their connection as father and son that is Jack’s best defense against the hotel.
Themes
