Doctor Sleep

“Maybe you can put the things from the Overlook away in lockboxes, but not memories. Never those. They’re the real ghosts.”

When Dan sees the bruises on Tommy’s body, he wishes he could lock away his memories of Wilmington. Dick’s voice, in his memory, reminds him that memories can be harder to deal with than ghosts. Memories haunt Dan in a way that make them impossible to banish, unlike the spirits from the Overlook. And memories that are repressed for too long began to eat at their hosts from within.

“There came a time when you realized that moving on was pointless. That you took yourself with you wherever you went.”

Since his time at the Overlook, Dan has avoided mountains. However, now he realizes his torment lives within his memories and within his preternatural gifts. Until he makes peace with who he is, he will never be able to outrun his past.

“In the end, life was as stupid as one of those fights. The world wasn’t a hospice with fresh air, the world was the Overlook Hotel, where the party never ended. Where the dead were alive forever.”

Dan fights the urge to drink. In his lowest, most pessimistic moments, he compares the world, and life itself, to the horrors of the Overlook. In the Overlook, the ghosts enjoyed tormenting the living as an addition to their constant festivities. When Dan drinks, or when his memories threaten to overwhelm him, he does not believe life is worth living, because it is a rigged game with an unhappy ending.

“We are the true Knot […] What is tied may never be untied. […] We endure […] We are chosen and fortunate. […] We take what they make […] We will use it well.”

At the Kozy campground, the True Knot chant their oath. They see themselves as a lucky, elect group, with a duty to dominate and profit from those who are weaker than they are. They are openly committed to taking and using the essence of mortals to prolong their own existences and believe they can live forever.

“I can’t, God can, I think I’ll let Him […] the God of my understanding.”

Dan doesn’t believe in God, but the AA program requires him to submit to a higher power. Dan finds a relief in surrendering to a will that is not his own, regardless of how vaguely-defined the Higher Power might be.

“How much of his father’s son was he? In how many ways?”

Dan always promised himself that he wouldn’t drink. However, when he was a first-year student in high school, the visions overwhelmed him to the point where he turned to alcohol. Even as a teenager, he was already concerned that he was following in his father’s footsteps, and that alcoholism was another facet of his genetic inheritance.

“You can’t blame human nature, and there was nothing more human than curiosity.”

Momo’s words are what make Abra decide that she will never investigate the minds of her parents of her grandmother. People are not equipped to resist curiosity, but Abra knows that there are levels of privacy that she is unwilling to compromise.

“Everyone had secrets. This he had known from earliest childhood. Decent people deserved to keep theirs […].”

Dan knows that Billy lies to him about how much he has cut back on smoking. However, his experience with his father, the Overlook, and his own history have taught Dan that not all secrets need to be exposed.

“Once they rode camels in the desert; once they drove caravans across eastern Europe. They eat screams and drink pain. You had your horrors at the Overlook, Danny, but at least you were spared these folks.”

Speaking through Concetta, Dick gives Dan a new perspective on the True Knot. Dan could not have comprehended worse monsters than those at the Overlook. However, the True Knot are ancient and practiced in their craft, while the ghosts at the Overlook were more like dangerous pests.

“God’s a connoisseur of fragile things, and decorates His cloudy outlook with ornaments of finest glass.”

Lucy remembers a line from one of Concetta’s poems. She compares people to glass ornaments, suggesting that people are the decoration that beautify what can be a gloomy world. Glass ornaments are also delicate, and there are many instances in the novel of how breakable people can be.

“[T]he good thing about being old, is you don’t have to worry about dying young.”

Dan tells John one of Billy’s favorite sayings when trying to convince him that they are telling the truth about Abra and the True Knot. Billy’s bravery is, in part, due to his age. He has lived a full, long life, and does not fear the end. He stands in contrast to the members of the True Knot. Despite their advanced age, they cling to life tenaciously and fearfully.

“America was staggeringly unobservant even twelve years into the Dark Age of Terrorism. If you see something, say something was a hell of a slogan, but first you had to see something.”

King uses the ease with which the True Knot are able to travel and kill as a chance to comment on the state of America in the decade after the 9/11 attacks. The True Knot hide in plain sight because they don’t have any reason to suspect that anyone is paying attention to them. People who do not see do not look, and no one looks at the True Knot as anything besides RV vagabonds.

“[F]eelings are invulnerable to rational thought.”

Dan feels guilty about the True Knot targeting Abra, even though he knows his guilt is irrational. They did not find her because of him, but because they happened to pass close enough to her to sense her power. Rationality does not serve its owners well in a story where the existence of the supernatural is real.

“Dan had no problem with the Higher Power thing, because he had a bit of inside information. God remained an unproven hypothesis, but he knew there really was another plane of existence.” 

Dan is unsure about the particulars of any given God’s existence, but he knows that the mortal realm on earth is not the only reality. This belief makes him a good fit for AA because the program’s insistence on surrendering to a Higher Power is easy for him. He does not require faith in any specific God to believe in a Higher Power. 

“Death was no less a miracle than birth.”

As Dan prepares to help Concetta pass on, he reflects on the nature of death. Because he knows that there is a place beyond death, Dan finds the moment of someone’s peaceful death to be beautiful. The place Concetta will now travel to is as mysterious and miraculous to Dan as wherever she came from before she was born.

“A LIFE WITHOUT LOVE IS LIKE A TREE WITHOUT FRUIT.”

Dan sees this phrase on a plaque in a restroom, just before he sees the flies on his face in the mirror. Love is what drives him and the others to keep fighting. Even the True Knot mourn each other when they die, despite their ability and willingness to do whatever they must to prolong their lives.

“If you can’t love anybody today, at least try not to hurt anybody."

Dan thinks of this AA tenet while investigating Abra’s house. He is not always able to figure out how to help himself, but Dan can usually find a way to help others. However, there are days when doing no harm is the most that he can expect of himself. This is enough to distinguish himself among apathetic people, or cruel people like Carling.

“Sometimes parents needed to be protected.“Sometimes parents needed to be protected.””

Abra’s father doesn’t understand why she didn’t tell them about her gift before. Dan understands that Abra thought she was shielding him from the potential problems and worries that her visions and abilities can create. Traditionally, parents protect their children because they have more experience, greater strength, and more resources. However, Abra’s abilities place her in the role of protecting her parents from dangers they do not understand.

“He was good and bad and I loved both sides of him. God help me, I guess I still do.”

Dan tells Billy about his father as they look at his childhood home in Boulder. Despite all of the distress Jack Torrance brought to his family, he is still Dan’s father. As an adult, Dan can empathize with Jack better because he knows that he also has good and bad sides to him. 

“He stood with his legs apart, his head lowered, his shoulders hunched, and his fists raised—the posture of every man who had ever lost his mind in a killing rage. Anger made men easy. It was impossible to follow his thoughts, because they had turned red.”

Rose enrages Dan, who then loses control of himself. Anger and shame were at the root of Jack’s problems, and the anger led to violence. Anger is predictable, which is why Rose thinks she can use Dan as a weapon.

“Life was a wheel, its only job was to turn, and it always came back to where it had started.”

At Dan’s 15th sobriety anniversary, he finds it ironic that he now goes by Doc. His parents called him Doc, as had Dick. Dan has lived in the cycles of family violence, alcoholism, and terrors. Now, however, the peace he felt before the Overlook is also proving to be part of the cycle. He knows that his life will inevitably lead to more good things, but they will always be offset by challenges and sorrow.

“[W]e’re only as sick as our secrets.”

Dan talks about a familiar AA quote. He places it in the context of a secret he has never told, before sharing his experience with Deenie and Tommy with the group. Dan celebrates his sober anniversary by unburdening himself of a tremendous shame, helping himself heal in the process.

You could not moralize children out of growing up. Or teach them how to do it.”

Dan tries to talk to Abra about the alcohol she drank at Jennifer’s party. He knows that she will have to make her own mistakes, however. There is no way to appeal to her sense of ethics that will prevent her from fumbling through her life as she approaches adulthood, and there is no rulebook.