The Shining

Jack is reading a novel when Danny and Wendy return from Sidewinder. Danny shows Jack a new model car that Wendy bought for him. Wendy says she has never been happier during their marriage, but she is concerned that Danny is losing weight.

Jack shows them the empty wasps’ nest, now destroyed by the bug bomb. He tells Danny he can put it in his room. Wendy is nervous; she hates anything that stings.

Wendy proudly listens to Jack type. He thinks he can finish his play, The Little School, by the end of the year. She watches Danny read. His ability to learn quickly makes Wendy uneasy sometimes. She sends him to the bathroom and waits in his bedroom, where she sees the wasps’ nest. Danny does not come out of the bathroom and fails to respond when she and Jack call for him. Jack breaks the door open, and they find Danny sitting on the edge of the bathtub, holding his toothbrush in a trance. He looks terrified. He babbles about the roque court and the mallet.

When Danny returns to consciousness, he apologizes. He says Tony told him to lock the door and then mutters something about “the timer” (126), which Jack does not understand. Danny says he went into the mirror to find Tony. While Jack puts him to bed, Wendy waits in her room. Danny asks Jack if he would ever hurt them; Jack says no, of course not.

Danny falls asleep. Jack is embarrassed about his temper. He was only worried about Danny, but any intense emotions usually turn to anger for him, which makes him want to drink. Jack tells Wendy that he will send them to her mother’s if something else happens; meanwhile, Danny has an upcoming doctor’s appointment.

That night, Danny dreams that he is being chased by someone who swings a mallet at him. He wakes to wasps crawling on his hand. They sting him 11 times. Jack takes Polaroid photos of the stings in case they can sue. He says the bug bomb was defective. Outside, he has the irrational thought that the hotel stung Danny, not the wasps. He thinks that he can never lose his temper again, “no matter what” (136).

In Sidewinder, Dr. Bill Edmonds examines Danny with an electroencephalograph. It might tell them if Danny has epilepsy. He asks Danny several questions about his trance-like spells. When they are alone, Dr. Edmonds asks about Tony. Danny tells him about when Tony showed him where Jack’s writing was, on the day he broke Danny’s arm. Tony either shows him where lost things are, or he shows him things that will happen. He used to like Tony, but now he only shows Danny scary things, like REDRUM.

Edmonds asks Danny to try to summon Tony. He focuses but only hears his mother thinking about her mother and sister. Then, Tony shows him a glimpse of his father. Jack is somewhere looking through old boxes with a flashlight. Danny watches him find a white scrapbook. He hears the pounding noise of the boiler, and then Dr. Edmonds wakes him up.

When Edmonds questions him, Danny can only remember that his mother was thinking about Aileen, her sister who died in a car accident. Edmonds tells Jack and Wendy about the trance, adding that Danny no longer believes they are considering divorce. They are shocked; they never spoke of separating in front of Danny. Jack tells him about his history with alcoholism and breaking Danny’s arm. Edmonds tells them that “small children are great accepters. They don’t understand shame, or the need to hide things” (147).

Wendy talks about precognition and second sight, which Edmonds refuses to believe in. Unconvinced, Wendy thinks about various private things that Danny, without any rational explanation, has known. Edmonds thinks Tony is no longer useful to Danny since Jack and Wendy have reconciled. He compares Danny’s need for Tony to an person trying to quit a drug addiction.

Finally, he asks Wendy if she had a sister named Aileen. Wendy confirms it, but she does not know how Danny would have known about her. They also say that they do not know what REDRUM or the shining are.

Jack finds the scrapbook while checking on the boiler. He looks through a massive trove of boxes and files and finds a newspaper from 1963. In the midst of such potentially rich research material, he starts to get excited about the thought of writing a novel.

A picture falls out of the scrapbook. It is an invitation to a masquerade ball, just after the end of World War II. He remembers Edgar Allan Poe’s story, “The Masque of the Red Death,” which ends in a grand unmasking during a time of plague. Next, he sees a 1947 article announcing the reopening of the Overlook. It talks about Horace Derwent, a wealthy California man who bought the hotel. He reads Derwent’s bio, which reveals he held a lot of patents.

Jack remembers rumors about Derwent being part of bootlegging and sex work operations. He bought Top Mark Studios, whose child star, Little Margery Morris, died of a heroin overdose at age 14.

A February 1952 news clipping announces Derwent selling the hotel to a California group of investors, who sold it to Mountainview Resorts two seasons later. After the president of Mountainview Resorts died by suicide, the Overlook was vacant for almost ten years. Jack reads several more reports about terrible events. Next, the head of High Country Resorts buys it, although there are rumors that Derwent is behind the purchase. A 1964 column surmises that the Overlook is a home for Mafia activity. The article gives a list of gangland figures and includes the story of a grisly shooting at the hotel. The article includes a picture of a police officer standing by a corpse. As he reads, Jack grows excited even more excited about the possibility of a book.

Wendy calls him to her and they talk. She notices that Jack has been rubbing his mouth so much that it is bleeding, which was a common sign that he wanted to drink back when he was struggling with alcoholism. Wendy asks him about sobriety. Jack denies that it is difficult, and they go upstairs.