The Shining

Jack and Wendy each have troubled relationships with their parents. Jack’s father was abusive and addicted to alcohol. During one dinner when Jack was a child, he beat their mother with a cane at the table without warning. Jack eventually came to see this as an appalling act. However, by the time he is prepared to kill his own family for the Overlook, he views his father as a reasonable man whose ungrateful wife and children oppressed him. Jack views part of fatherhood as a duty to punish unruly, ungrateful children.

Jack adopts the advice of Delbert Grady, who referred to the murder of his family as a mere correction. When his girls tried to burn down the Overlook, he “corrected them most harshly” (352), along with his wife. He tells Jack, “Husbands and fathers do have certain responsibilities” (352), and that Danny “needs to be corrected, if you don’t mind me saying so. He needs a good talking-to, and perhaps a bit more” (352). Jack still has moments of fatherly lucidity, even while descending into the grips of the Overlook’s evil. For instance, when the pressure on the boiler grows too high, he considers sacrificing himself and letting it explode so that they can escape the hotel and live on his insurance money. Through the character of Jack, King explores how men, who may have been meant well at some point in their lives, are driven by their insecurities, addictions, and traumas to inflict violence against their families.

Wendy’s mother was not physically abusive like Jack’s father, but she is still been a domineering force in her daughter’s life. Wendy gives inordinate weight to her mother’s disapproval. Her mother did not approve of Jack, and her unwillingness to accept him forced Wendy to make a choice. She chose to marry a man she loved instead of continuing to endure the absolute yoke of her mother’s expectations. Even Danny is aware—via the shining—of how fraught Wendy’s relationship with her mother has been.

Ultimately, the responsibility of the parents in the novel is to protect their children. Jack’s final act as a father, before succumbing completely to the hotel, is to ask Danny to run, and to tell him that he loves him. This is what Danny will remember later in Maine: not that his father tried to kill him, but that his father loved him enough to try to save him. Danny is also always aware that his parents want what is best for him. When Jack loses his job at Stovington, they can no longer afford to send Danny to the private nursery school he enjoyed: “He knew his father and mother worried about that, worried that it was adding to his loneliness” (24).

Ultimately, protecting Danny becomes Wendy’s responsibility, since Jack is no longer with them. Hallorann steps into the male authority role and promises to keep his promises and responsibilities to Danny.