“King builds his mood slowly at first establishing the idyllic setting of the peaceful old overlook… Minor ominous incidents occur at intervals between lengthy flashbacks to Jack’s and Wendy’s youth, showing the childhoods that molded their personalities. Gradually the story stabilizes in the present as the hallucinations become more vicious and the Torrance’s are increasingly hard- pressed to rationalize them as imaginary.” (310) In the Novel the Shining by Stephen King, the three main characters are trapped in the supernatural Overlook hotel for the winter. The novel begins with the protagonist Jack Torrance in a job interview with the manager of the hotel, Ullman. Jack is looking for the job of caretaker of the hotel during the winter. …show more content…
The hotel has four main sites on intense evil that is able to take control of Jack. One is the presidential suite, this place is where the two people that were involved in crime die. Stephen King uses the idea of evil and supernatural to represent crime and money in the world of “real things”. The second room in Room 217, this is the scariest room in the book because of the recent person that died there. The ghost of this room is able to physically hurt the person as we see when she tries to murder Danny. Jack also has similar experiences in this room, but rather than the women he see the body of George, the student that got him fired from his job. This makes the inner demons of Jack happy because now George is dead and he can destroy nothing of Jacks. The cellar and the boiler room are the memories of the overlook, that is where all of the history is and it is hidden from the rest of the world. As Jack reads more and more about the history of the hotel, it activates the evil thoughts that Jack has. Stephen King alludes to Edgar Allen Poe’s The Black Cat because in Poe’s story an alcoholic murders his wife and barriers her in the cellar. The cellar is the place that activates and induces the thoughts of murder in the mind of Jack Torrance. The next supernatural area is the shed. This is very important to the novel because it is the only way out of the hotel as it holds the snowmobile. This is the hotels last resort to get Danny. This also happens to be the place that Jack first tries out the Roque mallet. The shed is the evilest of the places because it makes Halloran want to murder Danny, this brings more sympathy to the character of Jack because Halloran who is the symbol for savior is able to be drawn into the hands of the evil hotel. The playground is the final location of the intense evil in the novel. In the story Danny doesn’t like to