Stephen King's 'The Shining'

I have watched Stephen King's 'Pet Semetary' and read 'Rose Madder' and liked both. A friend of mine has recommended King's 'Thinner' very highly, but whether I will be reading it in the near future is another matter! Why? I happened to read King's 'The Shining' and had a nasty experience!

Stephen King adopts a dark style of narrative which appears to go down pretty well with his fans, but then, if darkness is shown to contrast with light or to even accentuate it, it's different, but when all there is to the story is darkness and more darkness, one feels suffocated. Here's my take on the story:



SPOILER WARNING: Given below is a gist of 'The Shining'. Plot details (if there are any!) will be discussed.

Let me introduce the dramatis personae and give the lowdown about them till the starting point of the novel.

Jack Torrance: Talented book-author and budding playwright whose career and ambitions seemed to be going downhill after he became a full-blown alcoholic. He was forced to quit drinking when his wife Wendy threatened him with divorce after he broke his infant son's arm in a moment of alcohol induced madness. After quitting drinking, his frustration levels kept increasing. He got fired from his job as faculty member of a college when he almost beat a student to death upon catching the boy trying to slash his car tires. With the help of an influential friend, he found a job as the winter caretaker for the Overlook Hotel, Colorado. Jack Torrance needs this job very badly.

Winnifred Torrance aka Wendy: Jack's long-suffering wife. She always put up a brave front and lived with the crazy antics of her alcoholic husband who is now reformed. Like most wives, she too is given to nagging her husband and often suspects him of drinking, even though he has stayed off the liquor for months, causing him a lot of heart-burn.

Daniel Anthony Torrance aka Danny: The Torrence's kid. A boy gifted with telepathic and precognitive skills. Often sees snippets of the future as well is able to read people's minds. These days, he is plagued by nightmares, some of them related to Jack's new job.

Tony: Danny's 'invisible friend'. A mysterious boy who appears in Danny's mind and shows him glimpses of the future and things which otherwise would not be known to Danny.

Al Shockley: Jack Torrance's long time drinking companion as well as a rich and influential person. Majority stakeholder in the Overlook Hotel. The man who got Jack his caretaker job at the hotel, after Jack lost his teaching job.

George Hatfield: The boy on the debate team whose influential father was despised by Jack Torrance. Jack threw George out of the debate team on the pretext that he stuttered while speaking. George showed his displeasure by slashing the tires of Jack's VW Beetle. Jack retaliated by nearly beating George to death and lost his job as a result.

Dick Hallorann: The chef who works during the summer at the Overlook. Like Danny, he too can read people's mind and sometimes foresee the future.

Stuart Ullman: The notoriously uptight and tight-fisted manager of the Overlook. Jack's boss.

The Overlook Hotel: A luxury hotel with a notorious past including murders of mafiosi, suicides and accounts of prostitution. Rumors of it being haunted do the rounds often.

The story in a nutshell:-

Ullman, upon Al Shockley's insistence gives Jack the job of the winter caretaker of the Overlook. Dick Hallorann, a chef, briefs the family about the kitchen and the stores and in the process discovers Danny's special gifts of telepathy. He takes a liking for the boy and tells him that he too can read minds and further goes on to warn the boy about the queer things that occur in the hotel. He also tells the boy to telepathically signal to him for help, if he may require it. The Torrances are left to fend for themselves after all the staff of the hotel, including Ullman, leave for the winter. Initially Jack is happy, but the loneliness and the gloom (and the ghosts?) of the building overcome Jack who starts going on the wane. Danny is attacked and nearly killed by a ghost. An illogical and stressed out Jack puts paid to the family's only chance of leaving the hotel and reaching the main town when he sabotages the only snowmobile on the hotel premises, the only mode of transportation in the extremely snowy conditions which were prevailing. Jack goes completly insane and starts halucinating about drinking and even gets drunk on drinks which inexplicably appear in an empty wine-cupboard (Work of ghosts?) Maddened by his drinking and the voices of the ghosts that seem to appear and talk to him, he tries to murder his wife and son. His son sends out a telepathic SOS to Dick Halloran who comes down to help them out, only to discover a stark raving mad Jack. An injured Hallorann (injured griviously by Jack) along with Wendy and Danny make their way out of the hotel even as the old boiler (whose pressure had to be periodically reduced to prevent an explosion) exploded after the insane Jack had forgotten to dump the pressure for an extended period of time.

END OF SPOILER

Stephen King has bloated this gist in the most obscene manner by adding reams and reams of absolutely useless 'filler' data, information that is present just for the sake of increasing the size of the book, the number of pages. One is also not clear as to what King wishes to convey through the story. Through the collapse of Jack, one feels that King intends to say that 'Once a drunk, always a drunk' or something to that effect. It is a very disturbing and depressing read, especially for a person who may be contemplating or trying to quit drinking. Darkness, it is said, is not an attribute by itself, but the mere absence of light. There is so little light in this novel that Darkness, one feels, has become an attribute in itself. Darkness is all-pervading and one feels the need, nay, the very yearning for light, which is not there and the reader is left high and dry, marooned, so to speak. Completely avoidable reading.