Grady Character Analysis

The former winter caretaker at the Overlook Hotel during the winter of 1970. Ullman, the hotel manager, hired Grady as the caretaker, although he was hesitant to do so because Grady was an alcoholic. During his time at the Overlook, Grady went insane under the hotel’s evil influence and killed his wife, two young daughters, and himself. Ullman first tells Jack about Grady when Jack interviews for the position of winter caretaker as a sort of cautionary tale against the dangers of alcoholism and “cabin fever.” When the hotel begins to work its evil magic on Jack, and he begins to go insane, Jack hallucinates meeting Grady while drunk in the hotel’s Colorado Lounge. Grady, like the rest of the hotel, tells Jack that he must kill Wendy and Danny. He tells Jack that if he punishes Wendy and Danny the way Grady punished his family, they will eventually come to accept the hotel and stop resisting him. After Wendy knocks Jack out with a wine bottle and locks him in the kitchen pantry, it is Grady who lets Jack out—provided that Jack promises to kill Wendy and Danny, which he does. Presumably, Grady is destroyed along with Jack when the Overlook Hotel burns to the ground. The character of Grady illustrates King’s overreaching argument that “solitude can be damaging in itself,” and Grady is also an example of the hotel’s scandalous history and proof of its power to manipulate people and influence them to do horrendous things.