The Boiler Symbol Analysis

The Overlook Hotel burns to the ground at the end of The Shining after the boiler explodes, and the boiler is symbolic of Jack Torrance’s building insanity and murderous rage throughout the novel. When Jack is first hired as the winter caretaker at the hotel, Watson gives him special instructions to check the boiler twice a day. The boiler is old, and it doesn’t have an automatic shut-off. The temperature rises and the pressure builds, and it must be periodically dumped to avoid catastrophe. “It creeps,” Watson warns. The boiler is rated up to 250 pounds per square inch, “but she’d blow long before that now,” and Watson admits he wouldn’t stand next to it at 180.

Jack develops a routine of checking the boiler twice each day, and he soon begins spending most of his time in the basement after he finds the scrapbook. Like the boiler, Jack’s insanity begins to “creep” as the evil forces of the hotel influence his thoughts and actions, manipulating him through his alcoholism and commitment to his family. By the time Jack goes completely insane, hallucinating people and martinis, he starts forgetting to check the boiler and once lets the pressure build all the way up to 210 before finally hitting the damper. Jack forgets the boiler again at the end of the novel, just like Tony says he will, during a psychotic break in which he tries to kill Wendy and Danny. When Danny reminds Jack, and he finally checks the boiler, the gauge is buried in the red, and it is spitting steam and sparks. Jack dumps the boiler, and the gauge begins to fall. He screams, “I WIN!” and then the boiler explodes, just like Jack’s murderous insanity, killing Jack and destroying the hotel.