The Shining Free-Write Response

Unsatisfying Culmination

            I enjoyed The Shining in both book and movie form, but overall I think the book version is better because the ending does a fantastic job of wrapping up the story. In the book Jack has a moment of redemption when he is able to overcome the overlook’s crushing hold on him and help Danny, this enables him to try and amend all his wrongdoings and shows how his love for Danny is so immense it is able to break the consuming power the overlook has over him. Stephen King suggests that to achieve true horror love is needed and in this case it couldn’t be more true because the horror of the overlook finally taking Jack over and smashing his face in with the mallet is amplified by the contrast of his heroic love for Danny just moments before. This contrast of love and horror is lacking in the movie, none of the characters ever really show love for one another which downplays the terror of Jack turning on his wife and son because it isn’t as drastic of a change for he is consistently annoyed and angry at them in the movie. The movie lacks this point of redemption for Jack and, having read the book first, left me with emptiness where my sympathy for Jack once resided. Another feeling of depravity I got when watching the movie was the exemption of the boiler exploding and diminishing the overlook to ashes with Jack’s body inside. Between reading the book and watching the movie I looked forward to the explosive ending, and imagined that in the movie there would be a spectacular eruption and the shots of the Overlook ablaze would be breathtaking, suffice to say I was very disappointed. Lastly, I was probably most unsatisfied with the lack of resolution in terms of Dick, Danny, and Wendy. I enjoyed the fast-forward in the book, getting to see how the three were coping after the ordeal, and the seeing how Dick was becoming a fatherly figure for Danny. Sadly, the movie had none of these, Jack killed Dick and that was the end of that hope for a semi-happy ending. This lack of future insight in the movie was unfulfilling, but I was most bothered by the fact that Dick didn’t live long enough to be tempted by the Overlook. I loved when Dick went to get blankets from the shed and almost becomes one of the Overlook’s meat puppets, the suspense of not knowing if he would be able to fight the pull of the hotel or if he would succumb as Jack did and go out and try to kill Danny and his mother. That split second of unsureness about the outcome of the story was bracing and was unfortunately absent from the movie. Although the movie did contain a lot of brilliant amendments to the book, such as the stunning blood and elevator scene, the lack of a conclusion equivalent to the quality and satisfaction achieved in the book was disappointing.