Like many of Stephen King’s novels, The Shining is imbued with paranormal elements. The novel’s protagonist, five-year-old Danny Torrance, has psychic abilities, and the Overlook Hotel—where Danny’s father, Jack, is the winter caretaker—is full of unexplained occurrences and spirits of the past, keeping the Torrances in a constant state of fear. From the ghost of room 217 to the sinister animal topiaries guarding the haunted playground outside, the Overlook Hotel is positively terrifying; however, the Torrances’ fear of the Overlook itself pales in comparison to their fear of what the hotel is doing to them, and to Jack in particular. The hotel’s evil seems to be powered by Danny’s psychic abilities, and both Danny and his mother, Wendy, suspect the hotel is to blame for Jack’s worsening insanity. The hotel does something to Jack—it “gets to him,” as Wendy says. Jack and the hotel have a strange connection, and it eventually convinces him to kill both Wendy and Danny. Through The Shining, King juxtaposes the menace of the paranormal and the Overlook Hotel against the absolute terror that Jack imposes on his family, ultimately arguing that while the paranormal is terrifying, reality—in this case, Jack and his murderous rage—is much more frightening.
The paranormal occurrences at the Overlook Hotel are a constant source of fear in the novel, revealing the power of the supernatural to cause terror. Room 217 is haunted by the ghost of Mrs. Massey, a woman who committed suicide in the bathtub. Danny, Jack, and Dick Hallorann, the hotel’s cook, each have experiences in room 217, and they are each chased from the room by Mrs. Massey’s bloated and rotting corpse, a particularly terrifying image. While playing in the snow near the playground, Danny is chased by the corpse of a boy who died in the playground, and Danny is further terrified when the nearby animal topiaries come to life and stalk him. For Danny especially, the hotel is the source of intense fear. Similarly, Wendy is afraid of the hotel’s elevator and refuses to let anyone use it for fear they may become trapped. One night, Wendy wakes in the grips of hysteria to the sound of the elevator running between floors. The elevator requires someone to operate it, yet it runs on its own. Like Danny, the hotel terrifies Wendy, which again underscores how frightening the paranormal can be.
Despite their immense fear of the paranormal happenings within the hotel, Wendy and Danny are particularly afraid of Jack, which suggests that reality can be just as frightening. Even before Danny and his family arrive at the Overlook, Danny has visions in which Jack chases him through the hotel with a roque mallet—a mallet used in a game similar to croquet that has a soft rubber end and a hard end made of wood or metal. Danny senses that his father is mentally unraveling and becoming murderous, and he is terrified of this reality. As Jack begins to go insane, Wendy listens to him wandering the hotel alone and screaming, until she finally falls asleep. When she wakes, Wendy remembers Jack’s screams and thinks it was all a dream. But Wendy knows she is awake, “and that terrifies her more.” King makes it clear that Wendy’s reality and the growing threat of Jack induce more terror than even the worst nightmare. After Jack goes completely insane and tries to kill both Wendy and Danny, Wendy must sneak around the hotel and evade him. As Wendy creeps around the shadows of the hotel, she wonders what she will do if she meets Jack. She doesn’t know if she will “stand frozen with terror,” or if “the primal mother in her” will fight to the death to protect Danny. Wendy is sickened by her terror and likens it to a “waking nightmare.” While the hotel is certainly frightening, it is Jack who really scares Wendy.
When Wendy finally encounters Jack in his murderous rage during the climax of the book, he sets off “an old terror in her, a worse terror than any hotel could provide by itself.” The paranormal occurrences at the haunted Overlook Hotel are quite frightening; however, King implies throughout that what is truly terrifying is reality, not the paranormal.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Fear, the Paranormal, and Reality ThemeTracker
Fear, the Paranormal, and Reality Quotes in The Shining
The wanting, the needing to get drunk had never been so bad. His hands shook. He knocked things over. And he kept wanting to take it out on Wendy and Danny. His temper was like a vicious animal on a frayed leash. He had left the house in terror that he might strike them. Had ended up outside a bar, and the only thing that had kept him from going in was the knowledge that if he did, Wendy would leave him at last, and take Danny with her. He would be dead from the day they left.
It was the place he had seen in the midst of the blizzard, the dark and booming place where some hideously familiar figure sought him down long corridors carpeted with jungle. The place Tony had warned him against. It was here. It was here. Whatever Redrum was, it was here.
They watched until the car was out of sight, headed down the eastern slope. When it was gone, the three of them looked at each other for a silent, almost frightened moment. They were alone. Aspen leaves whirled and skittered in aimless packs across the lawn that was now neatly mowed and tended for no guest’s eyes. There was no one to see the autumn leaves steal across the grass but the three of them. It gave Jack a curious shrinking feeling, as if his life force had dwindled to a mere spark while the hotel and the grounds had suddenly doubled in size and become sinister, dwarfing them with sullen, inanimate power.
And still she agonized over it, looking for another alternative. She did not want to put Danny back within Jack’s reach. She was aware now that she had made one bad decision when she had gone against her feelings (and Danny’s) and allowed the snow to close them in . . . for Jack’s sake. Another bad decision when she had shelved the idea of divorce. Now she was nearly paralyzed by the idea that she might be making another mistake, one she would regret every minute of every day of the rest of her life.
As the number 2 rose on the shaft wall, he threw the brass handle back to the home position and the elevator car creaked to a stop. He took his Excedrin from his pocket, shook three of them into his hand, and opened the elevator door. Nothing in the Overlook frightened him. He felt that he and it were simpático.
“I don’t want to see,” he said low, and then looked back at the rubber ball, arcing from hand to hand. “But I can hear them sometimes, late at night. They’re like the wind, all sighing together. In the attic. The basement. The rooms. All over. I thought it was my fault, because of the way I am. The key. The little silver key.”
Around him, he could hear the Overlook Hotel coming to life.
It was hard to say just how he knew, but he guessed it wasn’t greatly different from the perceptions Danny had from time to time…like father, like son. Wasn’t that how it was popularly expressed?
All the hotel’s eras were together now, all but this current one, the Torrance Era. And this would be together with the rest very soon now. That was good. That was very good.
He had no idea what time it was, how long he had spent in the Colorado Lounge or how long he had been here in the ballroom. Time had ceased to matter.
“For instance, you show a great interest in learning more about the Overlook Hotel. Very wise of you, sir. Very noble. A certain scrapbook was left in the basement for you to find—”
What would she do if he came at her right now, she wondered. If he should pop up from behind the dark, varnished registration desk with its pile of triplicate forms and its little silver-plated bell, like some murderous jack-in-the-box, pun intended, a grinning jack-in- the-box with a cleaver in one hand and no sense at all left behind his eyes. Would she stand frozen with terror, or was there enough of the primal mother in her to fight him for her son until one of them was dead? She didn’t know. The very thought made her sick—made her feel that her whole life had been a long and easy dream to lull her helplessly into this waking nightmare.
“Gotcha!” he said, and began to grin. There was a stale odor of gin and olives about him that seemed to set off an old terror in her, a worse terror than any hotel could provide by itself A distant part of her thought that the worst thing was that it had all come back to this, she and her drunken husband.
“Oh Tony, is it my daddy?” Danny screamed. “Is it my daddy that’s coming to get me?’’
Tony didn’t answer. But Danny didn’t need an answer. He knew. A long and nightmarish masquerade party went on here, and had gone on for years. Little by little a force had accrued, as secret and silent as interest in a bank account. Force, presence, shape, they were all only words and none of them mattered. It wore many masks, but it was all one. Now, somewhere, it was coming for him. It was hiding behind Daddy’s face, it was imitating Daddy’s voice, it was wearing Daddy’s clothes.
