Part Three of The Shining is named “The Wasps’ Nest,” and wasps’ nests are symbolic of many things in King’s novel, including danger—especially the danger of the evil Overlook Hotel. When Jack is replacing shingles high on the roof of the Overlook Hotel, he finds a wasps’ nest under the flashing. Jack is lucky and is only stung once, but the wasps’ nest sparks a series of wasp references and stories, which can be found throughout the novel. Jack, who is first and foremost a writer, thinks of the wasps’ nest as a “workable symbol” for what he has been through in life—as well as what he has put Wendy and Danny through—and “an omen for a better future.” Jack’s future, however, isn’t better, and it ultimately ends in disaster, starting with the wasps’ nest. Jack neutralizes the wasps’ nest with a bug bomb and gives it to Danny, who puts it in his room and is later attacked in the middle of night by a swam of angry wasps. The wasps’ nest, in this case, symbolizes danger and Danny’s misplaced trust in Jack, and it proves instead to be an omen for a devastating future.
Danny isn’t the only character who has an experience with a wasps’ nest. Jack tells a story in which his own father smoked a wasps’ nest out of an apple tree and then torched it. “Fire will kill anything,” Jack’s father told him. Hallorann, too, has a story in which his brother incinerated a wasps’ nest with a lit firecracker. Near the end of the novel, Jack claims that “wits” are important in life, and that “living by your wits is always knowing where the wasps are.” Jack does not recognize the “wasps” lurking in the Overlook Hotel as the building and its paranormal inhabitants seems to overtake Jack and influence him to act out violently. In this sense, the Overlook Hotel is something of a wasps’ nest itself—a threatening presence full of danger, but one that is ultimately incinerated and destroyed when the boiler explodes.
Wasps’ Nests Symbol Timeline in The Shining
