Stephen Kings, The Shining, is a mind blowing and intense story about how evil can affect and control people. Jack Torrance, a recovering alcoholic, takes his wife and son, Danny, up to the mountains in Colorado to a hotel that Jack was recently hired to look over during the winter months. For that period of time, the family will be isolated from the rest of the world. The history and stories of The Overlook hotel, that Jack learns and hears about, indicates that the hotel possesses some kind of evil. In The Shining, King uses flashback, symbolism and foreshadowing to show that the weak can easily become consumed by evil.
King shows that with Jack's past, he can easily lose control over situations. Jack did a lot of things in the past that he regrets. When working at the hotel, he gets flashbacks. He thinks back to when he broke Danny's arm and when he almost killed him
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former student, George Hatfield. "The next thing was Miss. Strong, the French teacher, holding Jack's arms crying, screaming: "Stop it, Jack! Stop it! You're going to kill him!" (115). The thought of Jack's dark history haunts him and his family. Jack is trying to control his temper so he doesn't repeat anything. It is soon discovered that it is the hotel that is in control. Some of the minor events that happen to the Jack and Danny, symbolize that the hotel contains great evil and its power easily affects the entire family.
The smallest situations and stories build up to prove to the Torrance family that there really is evil within the halls of The Overlook. The wasps coming back after being exterminated was just the beginning. The dead woman who was found in the bathtub of room 217 was a sign, and an even bigger one when she came alive and tried to strangle Danny. Danny had visions of brains and blood on the walls in one of the rooms and this makes him wary. "So if you should see something, in a hallway or a room or outside by those hedges... just look the other way and when you look back, it'll be gone," says Hallorann (88). At first what Dick Hallorann, the hotel's chef, said was true and it worked. However, later when Danny looked back, the frightening objects remained visable. It seems as if these haunting sights are trying to tell the family that they really shouldn't be at the hotel. It also seems that the hotel's morbid history is a warning to
beware. The foreshadowing in this book really adds suspense and pulls the readers in. It adds a lot of effect because there are warning signs everywhere and it seems like no one is catching on or noticing them except Danny. Like the symbolism, the smallest things can give a huge warning, and could even prove that The Overlook hotel possesses the kind of evil that Mr. Hallorann explained and talked about. Out of the entire family, Danny's "shine" allows him to consume more knowledge about the dangers and warnings about the hotel. His imaginary friend, Tony, sends him visions about the hotel. With the knowledge that the family has, if they were smart, they would pack up and leave. Wendy, Danny's mom, thought about leaving, but shortly after, Jack began to lose his mind and became obsessed with the idea of harming his family, thinking they are against him because of his past. Trapping his wife and son inside, the hotel is influencing Jack to murder them. "For a moment he lay on the ballroom floor, breathing hard. REDRUM. MURDER. REDRUM. MURDER." (306). Danny has seen the word "Redrum" many times in his visions about The Overlook and after identifying the semordnilap, Danny knew that the end was coming. In The Shining, King uses flashback, symbolism and foreshadowing to show that the weak can easily become consumed by evil. This book is intense, fascinating and exciting. When dark forces begins to penetrate the mind, it can create a situation between life and death.
A movie, “The Other Sister,” is about two mentally challenged people name Carla Tate and Daniel. Carla Tate, a 24-year old woman, return to San Francisco from a sheltered boarding school after long years. After rejoining with her overprotective mother Elizabeth, a gentle and thoughtful father Radley, and two young and older sisters, Carla announces that she wants to attend a local school called Bay Area Polytech, a normal vocational school. Nevertheless of her mother Elizabeth’s disapproval, Radley supports her to pursue her dream. On the first day, Carla meets a boy named Danny and helps him when someone calls him “retarded.” They both get close to each other and fall in love quickly. Carla envied Danny for living on his own, so
Tony Horwitz’s book titled, “Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War” is about the crucial invasion in U.S. history that resulted the start of the Civil War and describes how John Brown helped plan the invasion of Virginia. At the start of the book, Horwitz begins with depicting John Brown’s early life including childhood to adulthood. John Brown was born on May 9, 1800 in the unfriendly peaks of Torrington, Connecticut. When he was eight years old, his mother passed away which made him go through a drastic trauma such as feeling nervous and awkward towards other women.
“Geronimo: an American legend” is a story of an apache warrior who fought against the United States in order to preserve his peoples culture. The film starts off, ironically, with the first surrender of Geronimo. His people are sent to a reservation called turkey creek. On this reservation they were expected to become farmers that would produce mostly corn. However the apache where not harvesting enough to sustain their community and had to rely on government checks.
All humans have their sufferings and Jack is no expectation. He has problems with drinking, depression and denial. Once Ian realized this, he reassured him and tried to ease him away from the pain. This is shown in the book when Ian stated to Jack “It’s just that I think you should stop drinking” (...
too much for one's own good. And Jack's past hurt him, so Jack ran from his past,
One of the things that changes Jack was his hatred and drives him to the point where he was willing to kill. In the beginning he was a choir boy who knew nothing much, but his hatred grew when he was not elected leader. In the book it quote “And you shut up! Who are you anyway? Sitting here telling people what to do. You can’t hunt, you can’t sing-” (91). This quote shows that Jack had
Many people think that reading more can help them to think and develop before writing something. Others might think that they don’t need to read and or write that it can really help them to brainstorm things a lot quicker and to develop their own ideas immediately (right away). The author’s purpose of Stephen King’s essay, Reading to Write, is to understand the concepts, strategies and understandings of how to always read first and then start something. The importance of this essay is to understand and comprehend our reading and writing skills by brainstorming our ideas and thoughts a lot quicker. In other words, we must always try to read first before we can brainstorm some ideas and to think before we write something. There are many reasons why I chose Stephen King’s essay, Reading to Write, by many ways that reading can help you to comprehend, writing, can help you to evaluate and summarize things after reading a passage, if you read, it can help you to write things better and as you read, it can help you to think and evaluate of what to write about.
Writers have changed the lives of many people over the years. In times of situation that people do not want to be in, times of wars, poverty, near death experience causing one to be immobile, or even just to get out of this world the works they create gives people those opportunities to do so. Stephen King is a big contributor of his published works to people in every on every continent. He is a writer of both novels and short stories, a film director, actor and even screen writer of most of his novels that turn into movies, but is he mainly known because of his works in the genre of horror. Going from his first published novel, Carrie and one of his famous selling The Shining King have made history as the king of
“A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam.” -Fredrick Pohl. A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury is about a man name Eckel who was seeking the ultimate hunt of killing a tyrannosaurus rex in the past. However, he had failed to follow the rules and went off the marked path, killing a butterfly. When he and the rest of his troop returned back to their time they found things had changed and Eckel was soon after shot for what he had done. Nethergrave by Gloria Skurzynski is about a young boy named Jeremy who was seen as a failure in real life, but made a home for himself online. He was transported to a website he had never seen before and chose to stay inside the game rather than return to his
In conclusion, Jack was overall an unique leader and person, he went from killing pigs to killing humans, and being the nicest person, to not so nice. With great power comes great responsibility; having determination, being intelligent, and possessing great outdoors skills, is what Jack had to be, to be a great
Arnold Van Gennep theorizes that “ritual actions often… transform people’s concepts of time, space, and society” (Nye 2008, 145). Nye bolsters Gennep’s points as well, explaining that experiencing rituals can cause people to have “their views of themselves” transform (Nye 2008, 145). These theories are immensely important to understanding how The Shining portrays extremist religious deontology in a negative manner. Jack initially carries himself with indifference before entering the hotel. The movie implies that Jack and his family have a largely healthy relationship before entering The Stanley Hotel. The introductory scene of the movie sees Jack calmly and casually interacting with his family on the drive to the hotel. Jack also gives up drinking for his family. However, after seeing apparitions and undergoing the textual, writing ritualization, Jack changes his perceptions of his family and reality entirely. The ritualistic actions he experiences, along with the deontological basis for his actions, drive him to perceive his family as an obstacle. One particularly pressing example presents itself when Jack returns to the gold ballroom to experience the bar again, but finds himself within a Grady family party. Clearly, Jack takes after Delbert Grady when Grady mentions that his wife is someone trying to “prevent [him] from doing his duty.” Grady directly references deontology with this quote, and the quote provides inscrutable proof for Jack’s deontological manner of thinking. As a result, Jack’s changes in perception after experiencing ritualization prove that The Shining displays the effect deontology and extreme religious experience can have on one’s
In his classic horror film, The Shining, Stanley Kubrick utilizes many different elements of editing to create unique and terrifying scenes. Kubrick relies on editing to assist in the overall terrifying and horrifying feel created in the movie. Editing in the movie creates many different effects, but the most notable effects created add to the continuity of the film as well as the sense of fear and terror.
The whole entire story could've had an entire different outcome if Jack didn’t have so many personality blemishes. Jack seems like he has something wrong with him as far as handling his emotions go. He is always very mean to Piggy and was the first to thirst for blood.
Many people today have read Stephen King’s horror novel The Shining and enjoyed his use of literary devices, but what about the techniques that transferred into Stanley Kubrick’s film? First, The Shining is about an already dysfunctional family, that move into a hotel because the father, Jack Torrence, has gotten a job as the caretaker of the hotel. Before taking the job, Jack is informed that the previous caretaker got “cabin fever” and killed his entire family. His son, Danny Torrence, is psychic and telepathic and begins to see and be bothered by the spirits living in the hotel. These spirits eventually possess Jack and he too tries to kill his family, which also includes his wife, Wendy Torrence.
I wonder why this boy is called the Golden Boy. This summer I read this book, it was very interesting and I really enjoyed it. The book is about a thirteen year old boy named Habo. He was called “ghost boy” by the kids at school because his skin was white, yellow hair, and light eyes but his family had rich brown skin. When their farm was seized his family had to vacate.