The Shining

In Boulder, Colorado, Wendy watches Danny play. Her upstairs neighbors are fighting. Danny asks why Jack lost his job. She tells him that his father had coached the debate team. He cut a boy named George Hatfield from the team, and George slashed Jack’s tires. Danny asks if Jack hurt George like he hurt him for spilling beer on Jack’s papers. In fact, George hit his head while falling after Jack hit him. Danny asks if Wendy wants to live at the hotel. She says she does if Jack wants it. Worried that Danny is so somber and has no one to play with, Wendy goes upstairs and cries.

Watson shows Jack the furnace and talks him through the failsafe system. During the tour, Jack keeps remembering the day he hurt Danny. He had been drinking and working on his play when Danny accidentally poured beer on the pages. He grabbed Danny’s hand to make him let go of the typewriter eraser and broke Danny’s arm. He thought Wendy hated him that day, and the incident made him want to drink even more.

Watson shows Jack the boiler. One of Jack’s most important responsibilities is to vent the pressure of the boiler if it gets too high, or else it may explode. As an aside, Watson says he always knew that Grady would be trouble. His girls had been eight and six years old. Ullman tried to keep it out of the newspaper, just like he had with other scandals.

Watson also tells Jack that a 60-year-old woman killed herself with sleeping pills after her young lover left her. A week later, a maid claimed she saw her in the bathtub in her hotel room, but Watson has never seen a ghost. As they talk about re-shingling the roof. Jack wonders what Grady’s last moments were like. As usual, Jack wants a drink.

Danny knows that his parents worry about his loneliness. He understands a lot about them, and they do not always know how. He knows that they call drinking the “Bad Thing” (25), a childish explanation of the serious problem of alcoholism. Danny often sees the word “divorce” in people’s minds, including those of his parents. Whenever his mother thought about divorce, her inner turmoil focuses on Danny’s broken arm and Jack’s incident with George Hatfield.

Sometimes, when Danny concentrates hard, he sees a tiny playmate he calls Tony. Tony often shows Danny things that might happen. He communicates in images and words. One day before Danny saw Tony, he’d seen the word “suicide” (27) in Jack’s head. When Tony calls to him, he is usually at a distance, trying to get Danny to come closer. Once Danny knew where his father’s papers were, even though Jack did not know how. He said that Tony showed him. He knows that his parents worry about Tony. Suddenly, he hears his father’s thoughts, which are focused on shingles.

Danny sees Tony and moves towards him as darkness swirls at the edges of his vision. He sees the symbol for poison superimposed on the air and warnings about electrical live wires. Danny sees the word REDRUM and hears breaking glass. Someone repeatedly screams “REDRUM” (30). He sees a shape with a hammer, telling him to come take his medicine.

Danny wakes and sees his father’s red VW bug arriving. Jack gets out with a bag of groceries. They go inside, and Danny keeps thinking about seeing the word REDRUM in the mirror.