Alcoholism In The Shining

In all three texts, the parent’s lives have been drowned in alcohol because it is a way for them to cope with their own issues in life. However, their child is deeply affected by this because of the toxic relationship that they and their parent shares. When the child is older, they struggle with their dark memories but eventually finds understanding and a sort of forgiveness to their past. In The Shining, Jack is aided by alcohol to control himself as he believes because at times there is a urning to lash out and hurt his family. His way of helping himself only results in him physically hurting his three-year-old son Danny, by breaking his arm. Danny is tormented by the memory but after his father’s death, he understands that alcohol was

This is because his father consumes alcohol all day which results in hangovers nonstop. His father has a terrible reputation in the town because he is known as the town’s drunk and Chris’ older brothers have been in and out of prison, making everyone suspect that Chris is trouble. Even though that Chris is tormented by his struggles, it builds him up to know he wants to make something of himself and never go down the road that everyone suspects him to. In Dolores Claiborne, Selena St. George’s father, Joe, shares an abusive relationship that involves Joe using Selena for sexual purposes. Selena does not suffer from those memories because she has forgotten them by finding comfort with medication and alcohol but does possess a rage towards her mother, Dolores. From visiting Dolores, she comes to realize what actually happened to her and understands why her mother is the way she is, concluding that Selena forgives herself by understanding that Dolores had meant to always protect

Jack’s son Danny, had to witness his father’s alcoholism ever since he can remember. Danny specifically can never forget a memory of Jack when his anger issues and drinking finally broke on his family: “He had whirled Danny around to spank him, his big adult fingers digging into the scant meat of the boy’s forearm, meeting around it in a closed, and the snap of the breaking bone had not been loud, not loud but it had been very loud, HUGE, but not loud” (King 24). Danny vividly remembers his father taking a hold of him when he had been hung over and the excruciating pain that he went through when Jack broke his arm. Danny struggles with trying to love his father due to that memory because his fear makes him wonder what if or what amount of time is left until Jack hurts him again. Danny to a certain extent understands that his father’s drinking is not normal because of the fear he has of him. Danny has felt and witnessed such an amount of instability within his family that he knows he never wants to turn out like his father: “And now Tony stood directly in front of him, and looking at Tony was like looking into a magic mirror and seeing himself in ten years, as if Tony – as if the Daniel Anthony Torrance that would someday be – was a halfling caught between father and son a ghost of both” (King chapter 54). Due to the amount of pressure that Danny has dealt with, he comforts himself by