History In The Shining

Far-Reaching History in The Shining

The world of The Shining is a supernatural one, a world in which ghosts are real and can directly affect the living world. Yet this Supernatural world is also intended to be rational, one with “verisimilitude”, (“Writing The Shining” pg 60). What makes the ghosts in The Shining feel real? They mimic the less literal ghosts of the real world. As Diane Johnson, screenwriter of The Shining, remarks: “To what extent supernatural forces existed and to what extent these were psychological projections was something [Kubrick and I] discussed at length, finally deciding that the ghosts and magical apparitions at the Overlook Hotel were both” (“Writing The Shining” 58). Ghosts, as the psychological projections of history and our own minds, haunt

The nature of time and history in The Shining is left wholly ambiguous, often disrupted both in the contents of the movie itself and its manner of framing. The movie is framed in different segments, a black scene interrupting the story by marking off time. It starts by counting through months (“September”) to hours (“Two Hours”), thus disrupting and distorting the passage of time for the viewer (“Remembrance of Things Forgotten” 208-209). The history of the hotel provides the supernatural elements. Dick Hallorann, the head chef of the Overlook, explains the Shining (Supernatural visions and elements of the hotel) that way: “When something happens, it leaves a trace of itself behind.” (The Shining 33:00). The specific visions of the past primarily consist of the daughters murdered by an earlier caretaker, a dead woman in the bathtub of Room 237, and the 1920s party that Jack stumbles upon. It’s at the party that Jack meets the murderous earlier caretaker himself, a man named Delbert Grady. He is another anachronism in the party, a man who during the hotel in the winter month and couldn't go to the party,