The Shining

I wonder what Stephen King’s wife, Tabitha, thinks of the character of Wendy in The Shining. And I wonder if Wendy bears any real-life resemblance to Tabitha. We will never know. Yes, she’s passive, and yes, she’s whiney. But she is also a saint. (and she cooks all the meals.) The novel would have been better if Wendy had been permitted by her creator to be more assertive and to have faults, too. I would have liked to see their faults collide.

King has come a long way since his writing during the late ’70s and early ’80s. Take Carrie. Here we have a man using the symbolism of the first menstruation of a young girl. In today’s language, this is called gender appropriation.

Despite all this, I like King’s work and The Shining in particular. His foreshadowing is effortless. We know from the beginning that Jack’s dark side will emerge, and Danny knows it, too. Or at least that something terrible is going to happen. Will the white-knuckling teetotaler break down and have a drink? You bet he will. Will the struggling writer finish his play? Will the down-on-his-luck teacher do well at his next job and come through for his wife and son? This is horror. So, in a word, no.

King famously detests Kubrick’s version of his book. There are pros and cons to this opinion. Interestingly, I learned today that Kubrick had employed the photographer Diane Arbus during his career. You can see her influence in the way the twins are portrayed. They really do look like an Arbus photograph when they stand before the doors.

Practical considerations aside, the hedge animals are much more interesting than the hedge maze. I would love to see them used in any subsequent films. Mazes are cliche—vicious hedge animals, not so much.

As someone who writes paranormal fantasy, I appreciate the way King describes the extrasensory abilities of Danny. Like this example:

“He considered it for a moment, then gathered his concentration and flung it out at Hallorann. He had never done anything like this before, and at the last instant some instinctive part of him rose up and blunted some of the thought’s raw force--he didn’t want to hurt Mr. Hallorann.”

King describes a little boy sending a powerful thought into a man’s mind with such practicality, as though he was talking about a baseball pitch. This style--devoid of high falootin’ ornamentation--makes Danny’s power sound all lthe more believable.

Likewise, Jack’s descent into homicidal madness is believable, and I think that’ because King puts his inner thoughts on the page. All of them. So we see Jack’s hopelessness and resentment. He is redeemed, in a way, because he really, really tried. In the end, the resentment of the alcoholic claims him:

“Resentment, a gray, sullen wave of it, pushed up his throat. His hands had clenched into fists again.

(not fair, goddammit, not fair!)”