King Country: The Shining
or, more than a feeling
More of King Country:
It’s impossible to think of this book without the Kubrick adaptation. For me, anyway. And despite King taking umbrage with Kubrick’s choices, I think it’s a very good adaptation, in specific ways. Possibly one of the best we have. And so I cannot really picture Jack Torrence without seeing Jack Nicholson and though Wendy is described about as differently as possible to Shelley Duvall, she’s still the one I saw when reading this book. Which made every mention of blonde hair cause me to doubletake, like there must’ve been some continuity error.
The novel itself offers a fascinating look at the collapse of a family and the terrors of alcohol and anger. Jack Torrence, promising young writer, gave into alcohol and this has taken everything from him. Including his promising career as a writer. But, most importantly, it leads to his wife, Wendy, fearing and resenting him.
The breaking point for her was when he broke their son Danny’s arm in a fit of anger.
Salem’s Lot also had a subplot about child abuse that I found incredibly disquieting, but I found something in both these cases of abuse that felt real. A terrible, brutal kind of real. But because the abuse is done by such normal people in the grips of extreme moments, the horror strikes harder.
When my first son was born, he had colic.
For those unaware, colic is a largely unexplained and unexplainable medical condition where infants scream for prolonged periods of time.
Hours.
Literal hours of this little child that you wanted so badly just shrieking in your face no matter what you do.
Your cooing words and soothing intonations mean nothing. Rocking and bobbing, nursing—it all shatters before the onslaught of screaming while you drown in this horrible, unending noise.
Along with that, you’re going on three hours of sleep for the third or fourth week in a row. Your googling does nothing. You find out that most infants sleep over 16 hours a day.
Yours sleeps 12 at most and spends at least six of those waking hours screaming at you.
Friends and family offer advice that anyone finds within 5 seconds of googling colic and you restrain yourself from taking their phone from their hands and throwing it at them.
It’s not their fault, after all.
It’s not your fault either.
Nor is it that infant’s fault.
Which somehow makes it harder to deal with. And so we tried everything and eventually just suffered through it all. Because, bad as colic is, it does just stop. Typically around three months. And that was true for my son.
But I remember one night. 4am. I’d been awake with him already for who knows how long, pacing the house, rocking him while he screamed. And in my head came a terrible thought.
And I understood why someone might shake a baby.
I set him down in his crib while he kept on yelling and woke up my wife and told her that I needed to switch.
She understood. It’s something that we agreed on in the early days of that nightmare. No questions asked. When one of us seemed ready to break, the other would take over and give the other a break.
We made it through that night and the next one and eventually it all stopped and our son is just like any other kid his age. Unaware of how miserable he made us way back then.
Of course, he’s been more than worth it. I’d take those terrible three months again for all that’s come after.
But that thought sometimes returns to me and I think of that moment when I was as close to breaking as I’ve ever been in my life. And reading The Shining while my wife is pregnant again makes me wonder what life would be had I done something unforgivable, untakebackable.
Wendy and Jack try to make their marriage make sense. Had Wendy had a better support network, she would have been out of there. But the thought of going to her mother was so abhorrent that she instead chose to stay with the man who broke her son’s arm.
I’m reminded of House of Leaves and how that book couldn’t exist in the same way without The Shining. In both, we have a couple hoping to heal themselves, their relationship, and each other by going somewhere new.
What they find instead is a haunted house full of its own malevolent energy and intentions.
Jack’s anger and alcoholism are at the core of this novel about family and horror. How one fed the other. And the little boy who loves his father, who feels the pain and horror inside him, and how he hopes to save him.
A boy with the Shine. A sort of psychic ability. Premonition, mind reading, and so on. Danny’s ability, though unknown to most in the novel, is among the strongest anyone has encountered. And so he feels the evil of the place.
And he feels how it works upon his father. Sucks the life from him and pushes him towards his worst impulses.
And there’s a sense that the Overlook Hotel feeds on Danny’s ability. As if Danny’s intense extrasensory perception works as a catalyst. Waking it up. Breathing life into it.
A feedback loop forms where the hotel uses Danny’s powers as an engine to tear his father apart, while Danny tries to protect and save his father.
Both father and son become obsessed with exploring the hotel and discovering its deep, dark secrets. The maelstrom of pain and horror at the hotel’s heart.
A bleak and tragic and brutal history.
Jack falls into it. Drowns in it.
And Danny is attacked by it.
The hotel understanding that Danny is an enemy, even as he causes its awakening.
There’s a deep heartbreak in this novel.
Fathers and sons. So much art circles round this relationship and yet it always strikes powerfully. And I was surprised by the way King went here. Because it’s not just Jack and Danny. It’s Jack and his own father. It’s Jack and his student he beat up in the parking lot of the school. It’s Jack and his rich older friend who brought out the worst in him while also getting him this job at the hotel.
But it’s also between Danny and Hallorann, the chef of the Overlook who recognizes Danny’s ability and even names it: Shine.
There’s an interesting dramatization of class in the novel. It’s never stated but it’s quickly understood. Jack’s whole life has been one where he must bow beneath those who were born above him. His current status in life depends wholly on his rich friend. He appreciates the opportunity but he also loathes that his fate depends on this other man.
And he hates it.
He’s been angry about it his whole life.
And it nearly tears open near the middle of the novel. This seething resentment tied to need and appreciation.
This, to me, is the strength of King in this novel. It’s not one single thing that ruins Jack Torrence’s life. Rather, it’s a dozen inescapable wires tied round him. They pull at him, cutting into his flesh at different rates and to varying degrees of severity, but the palpable claustrophobia of Jack’s life ratchets the tension higher and higher until you nearly can’t wait for him to snap, because that at least would be a reprieve.
The horror of the Shining is supernatural, sure, but the real horror is that the monster is inside you and it grew there by the accretion of your every waking moment. No single event or person made Jack a monster. An entire lifetime of pain and sorrow and broken dreams carved his chest open wide enough for the monster to climb out.
Here’s the order I’ll be tackling King’s novels. I’d like to give you a reason why this is the order and not some other order or why only these books and not a bunch of other ones, but I’m trusting to Jayson Young as my guide.
The Shining
Cujo
It
11/22/63
From a Buick 8
Revival
Firestarter
The Eyes of the Dragon
Misery
Pet Sematary
The Long Walk
The Stand
The Dark Tower I-VII
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Thank you for the courage to discuss the difficulty, particularly with the first born child who has cholic. My children also suffered through as did myself and my husband. I can relate to your feelings and often felt guilt for them but it is all part of being a parent. I, like you ,wouldn't give it up for anything.
"But I remember one night. 4am. I’d been awake with him already for who knows how long, pacing the house, rocking him while he screamed. And in my head came a terrible thought." This is so honest--I love it. Those early days are a real test. It's really easy to feel like a monster when those thoughts creep in. Glad you had that support system. <3