José Sanz de Vicuña Casals

Facultad de Letras y de la Educación

Grado en Estudios Ingleses

2016-2017

Título

Director/es

Facultad

Titulación

Departamento

TRABAJO FIN DE GRADO

Curso Académico

A Psychoanalytic Approach to Stanley Kubrick´s TheShining

Autor/es

© El autor© Universidad de La Rioja, Servicio de Publicaciones,

publicaciones.unirioja.esE-mail: publicaciones@unirioja.es

A Psychoanalytic Approach to Stanley Kubrick´s The Shining, trabajo fin de gradode José Sanz de Vicuña Casals, dirigido por (publicado por la Universidad de La Rioja), se

difunde bajo una Licencia Creative Commons Reconocimiento-NoComercial-SinObraDerivada 3.0 Unported.

Permisos que vayan más allá de lo cubierto por esta licencia pueden solicitarse a lostitulares del copyright.

Trabajo de Fin de Grado

A PSYCHOANALYTIC APPROACH TO

STANLEY KUBRICK’S THE SHINING

Autor:

José Sanz de Vicuña Casals

Tutor/es:

Fdo. José Diaz Cuesta

Titulación:

Grado en Estudios Ingleses [601G]

Facultad de Letras y de la Educación

AÑO ACADÉMICO: 2016/2017

2

3

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract .................................................................................................................................. 5

Resumen ................................................................................................................................. 5

1. INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 7

2. METHODOLOGY FOR THE ANALYSIS ................................................................. 11

3. OBJECTIVES OF THE ANALYSIS ........................................................................... 15

4. ANALYSIS OF THE FILM ......................................................................................... 17

5. CONCLUSIONS .......................................................................................................... 45

6. REFERENCES ............................................................................................................. 47

7. ANNEX ........................................................................................................................ 49

4

5

Abstract

My final year dissertation deals with the premise of a psychoanalytic analysis of the main

characters of Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film The Shining. By doing this, I attempt to show

that the plot of the movie and for the most part everything that happens from beginning to

end can be explained as the delusions of three mentally unstable individuals who are

overwhelmed by their own demons and isolated from society in a place that is by itself the

representation of hell on earth. To be able to do so, I have based myself in the theory

published in 1923 by Sigmund Freud, who gave an insight about the different parts of the

human mind. I mainly refer to the difference between conscious and unconscious, and the

id and the ego.

Resumen

Mi trabajo de fin de grado se basa en la premisa de un análisis psicoanalítico de los

personajes principales de la película de 1980 dirigida por Stanley Kubrick y de título El

Resplandor. Haciendo esto, intento mostrar que la mayor parte de elementos que

conforman la trama pueden ser explicados como las ilusiones que tres individuos

mentalmente inestables sufren al ser desbordados por sus propios demonios, e

influenciados por un lugar que es directamente el infierno sobre la tierra. Para poder

conseguirlo, me he basado en la teoría publicada por Sigmund Freud en 1923, en la cual

dio su acercamiento hacia las diferentes partes de la mente humana. Hago alusión

principalmente a las diferencias entre consciente e inconsciente, e igualmente a las

diferencias del id y el ego.

6

7

1. INTRODUCTION

Like most of my fellow classmates, I had a really difficult time when choosing the

theme for my final year dissertation, as it is not an easy task to choose such an important

part of my tasks as a university student. At first, I wanted to do my work about comic

books and their relevance in modern society, but, I soon came to realize that this particular

topic was very broad and would take from me a titanic effort to develop it as I had planned

to, so, in the end, I chose to analyse a film from one of my favourite movie directors,

Stanley Kubrick. My other option was Quentin Tarantino, and these particular choices

where in my head not because the themes of the films, or how famous they became, but

because their way of making a movie, which I find very peculiar and special. The

particular choice of this film, The Shining, came to me because it is one of the first horror

movies I had seen in my entire life, and the way it was made, as it is an adaptation from

one of my favourite writers, Stephen King, made me take a particular interest in this film.

We also have to bear in mind that The Shining was Kubrick’s first time directing a horror

movie, but it did not discourage him at all, as he liked King’s novel very much (Polo 1999:

147).

When I started looking for sources to help me write the dissertation, I stumbled

across this review of the film by Janet Maslin, written in 1980, the year the film debuted,

and I knew I had to comment on the first paragraph to my work: it explains very well the

idea that I want to try and explain with this dissertation. In it, Maslin defines the movie, as

well as the Overlook hotel, as very frightening and prone to scare the spectator. In fact, she

says that it is the first movie to scare the audiences with a simple “Tuesday” (Maslin 1980:

1).

It has been said in several sources, for example in Ian Nathan’s review of the film

on 2012, that Stephen King, the author of the novel in which the film is based hated the

movie. This is due to the fact that Kubrick did not make a real and faithful adaptation of

the book, he left out a lot of supernatural themes and scenarios and focused in a more

ambiguous interpretation of the story, and this is precisely the core of my dissertation, how

Kubrick’s psychological and two-sided approach to the story enabled the viewers to choose

how they wanted to see the story, as a ghost one or as a psychological one (Nathan 2012:

1).

Some critics also support the idea that Kubrick saw himself in Jack Torrance, and

that the story that he wanted to represent with the film was slightly autobiographical, but

8

his real inspiration derived from Stephen Crane’s story “The Blue Hotel” (Baxter 1999:

301).

There have been, of course, some bad critics to the film from people who, like King,

preferred the book to the film, mostly because of the plot. But I have not yet encountered a

critic about this film that speaks badly of it at a technical level, since, as everyone agrees,

The Shining sits at the top of the amount of effort that a crew can make to make a movie.

In this year, I have attended a course that dealt with the making of a short movie, and we

had to, of course, re-do several scenes. But the degree of perfectionism that Kubrick

imposed to this film was a hundred times more excruciating than ours. As said by Roger

Ebert, and only to quote one example of this excessive need for perfection: “There is one

take involving Scatman Crothers that Kubrick famously repeated 160 times. Was that

"perfectionism," or was it a mind game designed to convince the actors they were trapped

in the hotel with another madman, their director?” (Ebert 2006: 1).

There is also a great summary of what the movie entails written by Paul Duncan:

Stanley Kubrick no tardó en darse cuenta de que «somos capaces de los actos más

bondadosos y los más perversos: el problema es que, a menudo, cuando nos interesa,

no distinguimos entre unos y otros». Esto se convertiría en uno de sus temas

recurrentes, un leitmotiv que repetiría en todas sus películas. El bien y el mal. El

amor y el dio. El sexo y la violencia. El deseo y el miedo. La fidelidad y la traición.

Los protagonistas de todas sus cintas mantienen una lucha interior con estas fuerzas,

mientras las circunstancias exteriores (una guerra, un romance o un crimen) sirven

para subrayar el conflicto ante los espectadores (Duncan 2003: 9)1

The main theme of this movie, The Shining, is, in fact, really common, and it is not

by any means revolutionary. It has to do with ghosts and a haunted place where the

protagonists have to face off with the dark spirits of the underworld in an attempt to make

it out alive of that place. But the interesting twist about this typical archetype of a ghost

story that is given here is that, perhaps, there is no such thing as spirits or presences, or at

least, not in a way that they would directly interfere with the real world. From my point of

view, and this is the principal aim of my dissertation, the psychological state of the

1 This and other similar quotations appear in Spanish because that is the language this and some other sources are available at the Library of the University of La Rioja.

9

characters is, if not more, as important to the dark and horrible development of the story as

the paranormal activities that happen around the Overlook hotel.

Even at the first stretches of the film, we can already feel a very unsettling

atmosphere around the story and the characters, neither their dialogue nor their expressions

are very normal. Jack Nicholson, for example, made an outstanding work with his facial

expression and gestures, giving the feeling of being literally possessed in contrast with his

calm aspect at the beginning of the film. There is also a connection between the idea of

progression and the different angles the camera uses to show that progression, for instance,

the movie opens with an extremely long shot, which starts developing into medium shots

for the first half of the movie to end up with practically a lot of closeups (Polo 1999: 150-

151).

10

11

2. METHODOLOGY FOR THE ANALYSIS

The methodology I have decided to use in order to analyse the movie is

psychoanalysis, and I will be basing that methodology with the theory that appears in the

2010’s republication of the 1923 book The EGO and the ID, by Sigmund Freud. There are

two chapters of the book that I am using in order to analyse the characters of this film, so I

am going to explain them in the order they appear in the book. Firstly, I will talk about the

differentiation between consciousness and unconsciousness, related for the most part to

Dany, the son of the Torrance family, who has developed a second persona inside of him,

who at some point of the movie will awaken and leave Danny in the subconscious part of

his mind. Secondly, I will explain the idea and the differences between the Id and the Ego,

two of the three parts that compose our psyche. The third one, the Super Ego, is present in

one character, Mr. Hallorann. Freud explains the Super Ego as the learnt segment of the

mind, acquired when a child has gotten rid of the Oedipus complex and therefore fixates in

the figure of his father, being it his real father or other social constructs as the laws or

Religion. Danny could be another representative of the Super Ego? Yes, but that influence

is given to him by Tony, by himself, so his Super Ego is not completely real, is

encapsulated into his own representation of reality, as Danny does not trust Jack nor likes

him in the slightest. He knows that there is nothing to be learnt from him (Freud 2010: 30-

35).

At the beginning of the book, Freud gives his explanation of what the conscious and

the unconscious are. Stating that conscious is purely a descriptive term, which is based on

the most direct and certain character. To reinforce that idea, he explains that every mental

element, giving the example of an idea, will not be, as a rule, permanently conscious. Then

he proceeds to explain the idea of the state of consciousness, which is explained by the fact

that the same idea that was conscious a moment ago might not be conscious now. That idea

is latent, in his own words, it was capable of becoming conscious at any time. After that,

he postulates that the words latent and unconscious are the same in this context.

What is to be extracted from this explanation to be used for the dissertation? The idea

of unconscious as something latent and capable of becoming conscious if certain

conditions are met is the exact explanation for what happens to Tony and Danny. In that

sense, we could say that Tony is the embodiment of the unconscious. Even though he

interacts with Danny, he is not really there at any moment, until the shock received by

12

Danny, who cannot cope with the situation that is going on around him, make him become

conscious and take Danny’s body.

For the second part I am going to explain the idea that Freud develops about what the

Ego and the Id are, and the relationship between them. Lastly, I will explain how these

ideas will help me analyse the characters of the movie.

First of all, we have the idea of the Ego, which Freud describes as follows:

The idea that in every individual there is a coherent organization of mental processes,

which we call his ego”. This ego includes consciousness and it controls the

approaches to motility, i.e. to the discharge of excitations into the external world; it is

this institution in the mind that regulates all its own constituent processes, and which

goes to sleep at night, though even then it continues to exercise a censorship upon

dreams (Freud 2010: 8).

As we can see, Freud mainly describes the concept of ego as the part of our minds

that coherently organizes the mental processes, even when we sleep, and which also is

responsible of the repression of our basic instincts. It is like a kind of resistance that we

impose to ourselves even without knowing it, that makes limitations to what we think of or

feel. The example of Jack in the movie is a very good one to what the ego is trying to

control and supress. Jack is a child abuser and hates his family. This is a fact. But it is not

until the cabin fever removes his ego, and thus, his limitations, that he finally is able to

express what he really feels. He is bored of Wendy and his son is but a nuisance for him.

He does not love any of them at all. There is also the fact that the hotel also has a great

negative influence on Jack, pushing him to directly try to kill his family, manipulating his

hatred.

Secondly comes the idea of id, which is explained as that repressed part of the mind,

the part which is behind the ego, but not completely separated from it. Id and ego, even if

by a very thin thread, are connected in every person. Now I will quote some passages from

this part of the book in the hope that they will help with the understanding of the

relationship of these two parts of our mind.

It is easy to see that the ego is that part of the id that has been modified by the direct

influence of the external world. In a sense, it is an extension of the surface

differentiation. Moreover, the ego has the task of bringing the influence of the

external world to bear upon the id and its tendencies, and endeavors to substitute the

13

reality-principle for the pleasure principle, which reigns supreme in the id. […] In the

ego, perception plays the part which, in the id, devolves upon the instinct. The ego

represents what we call reason and sanity, in contrast to the id, which contains the

passions (Freud 2010: 23-24).

From my point of view, these two fragments do great at representing what is meant

when referring to the ego and the id. One is the suppressor, the other is the supressed. At

the start of the movie, Jack is a completely normal individual who has a relatively

complete control over his desires. I mean relative because he has problems with alcohol

which led him to even hurt his son, Danny. So in my opinion his id is not completely

restrained by his ego from the first minute of the movie, and I think that the Overlook hotel

takes advantage of that fact to manipulate him more easily than, for example Wendy, who

starts as a very docile character, very restrained by her ego. But who, in the end, opposite

to Jack, will find in the release of her id the strength to fight for herself and Danny. Allen

Nelson also supports this idea, explaining that Jack is torn apart by the duality of his moral

education and his urge to release his diseased libido (Nelson 2000: 198).

14

15

3. OBJECTIVES OF THE ANALYSIS

In this dissertation, I analyse differences between the conscious and the

unconscious, and the ego and the id of the protagonists, as well as try and determine how

they really are, and if that has a direct impact on the action of the film itself, or not. As a

matter of fact, there is a great deal of representations of the unconscious in this movie, and

the characters are quite complex, so they will not be the same as they were when the movie

starts. We have to bear in mind, however, that this movie is in fact an adaptation from a

Stephen King book, The Shining (1977) so many details where, sadly, omitted, and that has

to do with the personality of the characters, making them less deep than they should, but

not to a point where we cannot even analyse them: they are pretty well constructed

characters.

Another important fact about the movie is the idea of resonance. Michael Clement

has pointed out that this movie and another one of Kubrick’s films, Eyes Wide Shut (1999)¸

constituted a matched pair. One as a horrific vision of what happens when a man is isolated

with his family for too long, and the other about what happens when a man ventures too far

outside the protective structure of the family (Rodney 2008: 446).

16

17

4. ANALYSIS OF THE FILM

The film starts in a very peculiar manner, for the first three minutes of the film we

are following Jack Torrance, one of the main characters, as he makes his way to the

Overlook Hotel. These first three minutes help to build the tension for the spectators

because of the way it is filmed, with an aerial point of view, and the unsettling music that

was chosen for this scene, which, in a way, tells the spectators that what is happening

before them is the start of something bad. The kind of camera present here is a

disembodied one, there is no cameraman involved in the shot, which gives the spectator a

purely subjective impression of effortless mobility, which could be compared to Dave

Bowman’s journey. The music accompanying the shot is called “Wrath of God”, which

helps to add a sinister note to it (Rasmussen 2001: 234).

F001

Then we are presented with one of the few chapters in which the story is represented.

It is called the interview, and we are properly introduced to the character of Jack, who, at

first glance, seems to be a very polite and normal man. He is introduced to the director of

the Hotel, so we suppose he has business there.

Then, suddenly, the action shifts towards the other two main characters, Wendy,

Jack’s wife, and Danny, his son. They are arguing about the possibility of living in the

Hotel if Jack is accepted as the new warden, but Tony, Danny’s imaginary friend,

strangely does not feel very good about the idea of going. As we will see shortly after,

Tony is the representation of Danny’s unconscious thoughts, and his way to canalize his

visions, as he is very young and afraid to cope with them on his own. Wendy is introduced

as a very normal and caring mother, and her character will remain like that for the most

part of the film.

18

After the introduction of Jack’s family, we are back at the Hotel, when the interview

is being held, and Jack is told a series of characteristics of the place, as his exact work will

be to take care of the hotel through the winter, as the emplacement of the hotel, on top of a

mountain, makes it inaccessible from October 31st (note this is the night of Halloween) to

May the 15th. The director, then, reaches the part when he admits that some years ago, the

warden who was supposed to take care of the hotel went mad and killed his wife and his

two daughters with an axe, and then killed himself. Jack laughs at the story and assures the

director that “That is not going to happen to me.” This is quite a revelation, because this is

precisely what is going to happen in the end.

F002

In Jack’s first scene, we can begin to grasp his ego. He seems like a cheerful man,

eager to work and without any type of mental problems. He also seems stable enough to

not be discouraged by the idea that a man killed his family with an axe during the winter of

1970. In fact, this scene was commented by Roger Ebert, one of the most famous

American film critics, as the starting point for his review of the film, a comment that went

as follows:

Stanley Kubrick's cold and frightening "The Shining" challenges us to decide: Who

is the reliable observer? Whose idea of events can we trust? In the opening scene at

a job interview, the characters seem reliable enough, although the dialogue has a

formality that echoes the small talk on the space station in "2001." We meet Jack

Torrance (Jack Nicholson), a man who plans to live for the winter in solitude and

isolation with his wife and son (Ebert 2006: 1).

In the middle of the dialogue scene, we are introduced to the other two members of

the Torrance family: Wendy, the mother, and Danny, the son. They hold a short

19

conversation about the hotel and Danny’s imaginary friend, Tony, is also introduced,

adding that he does not want to go to the Overlook.

At first sight, it would be considered normal for a kid of Danny’s age to have an

imaginary friend, but, just after Jack’s conversation is over, we see Danny having his own

dialogue with Tony, telling him to show him why he does not want to go to the hotel. This

conversation is the first example of the paranormal in the film, because Tony already

knows that Jack got the job, and shows Danny a fragment of the future: an elevator full of

blood. But apart from the paranormal conception of Tony, it is safe to say that he also

happens to be a huge support to Danny’s fragile ego, acting as a kind of brotherly figure to

him, and giving him a way to alleviate his stress. We could also say that Tony is Danny’s

way of manifesting his powers, referred to as the shining in the film. Being a kid and afraid

of what he can do, he has created another persona inside of him that works as the

perpetrator of the powers he possesses but does not want to use

F003 F004

After the shock of seeing what awaits at the hotel, Dany is checked by a doctor.

From what we can imply from the scene, Danny has probably peed himself and passed out,

because when he was brushing his teeth and had the vision, he was wearing pants, and in

the bed, he is not wearing them. When asking about Tony, he says that “He is the boy that

lives in my mouth.” But he does not want to add any details. In this scene Wendy is with

the doctor and Dany and appears as a very loving and caring mother, a type of behaviour

she will keep for the most part of the movie. This motherly behaviour will take two

different roads, one for Jack and another for Danny, becoming fear towards Jack from the

second half of the movie and the desire to protect Danny from Jack. It is in this moment

when she will awaken as an active part of the story. After seeing Dany, the Doctor and

Wendy have a little conversation where we find out that, in a drunken rage, Jack dislocated

Dany’s shoulder when he was younger because he messed with Jack’s papers, and this

happened to coincide with the arrival of Tony, so I think it is safe to say that there is a deep

20

connection between the trauma that Danny suffered because of the physical abuse he

suffered and the need to let go of the stress caused by the shock, therefore creating Tony.

The next few scenes are all about the Torrance family arriving at the Overlook hotel

and having a tour around it, and then we see Danny, playing alone until he has the very

first confrontation with the twin sisters. A curious thing about this is that in the interview

that Jack had with Mr. Ullman at the start of the movie, he stated that the girls were 8 and

10 years old, but their real appearance is as twins.

F005

In the following scene, Wendy asks Mr. Ullman when the hotel was built, and he

answers that between 1907 and 1909, but the interesting part about that is that he also

states that the hotel was built in an ancient Indian burial ground, something that in the

American imaginary has been many times related with the idea of the haunted as if the

spirits of the Indians had made a curse of the place that was their sacred ground. This idea

is not directly related with the psychological explanation for the events of the film that I

want to convey, but we need to keep in mind that the story is never clear in this aspect,

whether the events are real but supernatural or unreal and psychological. In my opinion,

the supernatural connotations of the hotel could very well be explained in the context of

the hotel being haunted by Indian spirits, who made it with an evil mind of its own,

programmed to kill everyone he could during the winter as a vengeance towards the people

who built the hotel.

21

.

F006

On the last part of the tour, Mr. Ullman introduces Jack and Wendy to Dick

Hallorann, the head chef of the hotel and one of the most important characters from my

point of view, even if he is not of a real relevance for the story. Dick Hallorann is the one

who explains Danny what “the shining” is, and he even uses it with him, making a kind of

telepathic link that will make him go in his aid in the final compasses of the movie.

F007 F008

Another detail to keep in mind is that every time that Danny’s power manifests, there

is a very particular sound, like a squeal.

I like this character and I think that he is important because he is the one that offers

the stronger connection with the real world when madness strikes and the hotel, when

everyone is suffering and afraid, he seems as the helping had coming to aid the family,

only to be killed by Jack’s axe.

During their conversation, Dick Hallorann and Danny discuss about the real nature of

the Overlook, and Mr. Hallorann refers to the hotel as a place with a shining to it as well.

Danny knows that bad things happened there, but Mr. Hallorann tries to deny that anything

is wrong with the place so Danny feels safer. I think that Hallorann has a very paternal

feeling towards Danny, he cares about him and they connect at a very special level,

22

probably because of the shining they possess. He also has a carefree but strong personality,

given the fact of his adamant advice towards Danny keeping out of room 237.

Now the film does a jump of one month into the future, and Wendy and Jack are

having a conversation in their bedroom, when Jack tells his wife that he had fallen in love

with the hotel right away, and that when he came for the first time, it was like he had

already been there. This is a very important piece of information because in the last scene

of the movie, we can see Jack in a picture from the Ball of July of 1921. We have to bear

in mind that the film takes place during the 80s, as it was filmed in 1980 and King’s book

written in 1980.

Up until this point of the film, the behaviour held by all three of the family members

had been normal, even though they spent the most part of the day separated. Jack in the

Colorado lounge with his writing, Wendy taking care of the hotel and Danny playing by

himself. It is not until the 45th minute of the film when we get to see a significant change in

Jack’s behaviour. In the scene, Wendy arrives to check on Jack, who is writing, he gets

very angry at her because she is breaking his concentration, and kicks her out of the place.

In this scene, we witness the first sign of Jack’s mental deterioration. His ego is being

slowly but steadily being overtaken by his id, but the unnatural fast pace at which this

occurs can be explained by again two theories: that he is starting to suffer from cabin fever

or that there is something else manipulating his mind.

F009

In the following scene, we are confirmed with Jack’s insanity, as we see him looking

at Wendy and Danny through the window with a completely lost expression, swinging

between anger and laughter, demonstrating his growing mental deterioration. In this

particular sequence, there exists the perfect example of the type of view Kubrick wanted to

give to the film, and this quote from Zunzuneugi explains it perfectly:

23

Jack Torrance acecha desde el interior del hotel a su familia, que camina a través del

jardín-laberinto. Inmediatamente se acerca y observa una maqueta que reproduce

hasta en sus menores detalles el laberinto. Cuando el contraplano se produce –

vertical, gigantesco, desmesurado– mostrará el laberinto real en el que se pierden

pequeños insectos– la esposa y el hijo de Torrance.

Es, precisamente, en la fractura que introduce esta escena donde más claramente se

pone de manifiesto el dispositivo que funciona en El resplandor. Sustitución de

puntos de vista. Trampa visual en la que el espectador es zarandeado entre miradas

bien diversas. La mirada de Torrance. La mirada de Dios. La mirada de Kubrick

(2007: 590).

F010 F011

Now we experience another short jump in time, and are presented with several

scenes, like Jack writing again in his desk or Wendy trying to contact the outside with the

radio, all this is accompanied by a gloomy background music that shows how the family is

steadily getting more and more isolated with the outside world. There is just a single

lifeline left, a radio that communicates them with a forest warden station down the

mountain.

The following scene is one of the most shocking ones on the film, as we see Danny

directly confronting the two sisters, who ask him to play with them forever, mixing images

of them and their deaths, horrifying the young boy. Before that, we could see him

travelling through the hotel with his tricycle, followed by the Steadycam, which is used by

Kubrick as an exaggeration to build up the tension needed to generate that amount of fright

that is needed for a horror movie (Philip 1988: 151).

I think that it is important to note that after seeing the vision, Danny interacts with

Tony, telling him to stay calm, that the scene that he is seeing is just a remnant of

something that happened before, like “pictures in a book.” This means that even though

24

Danny is capable of feeling these leftovers, everything that he sees is in his imagination,

there is no real interaction or any kind of change in the real world.

F012 F013

The next scene features Danny and Wendy talking while watching TV. Danny is

bored and wants to go to his room to get his fire engine. Jack is there and according to

Wendy he went to bed only a few hours ago, so she does not want Danny to disturb him.

Nonetheless, Danny goes to the room, and what follows is one of the most disturbing

scenes of the movie.

When Danny enters the room, Jack is awake, and staring aimlessly through the

window. He notices Danny and they have a conversation, but it is very clear for the

spectator that Jack’s mental condition is no longer the same as the one we saw at the first

compasses of the movie, he seems deteriorated both physically and psychologically. Even

his way of speaking is no longer the same, he has a more tender, calmed voice, which in

combination with his words, the music and his expression, make everyone feel

uncomfortable, starting with Danny, who is clearly scared of Jack. In a moment of their

conversation, Jack tells Danny that he wishes that they could stay in the hotel forever and

ever, just the same phrase that the sisters had told Danny some days ago. This is a good

proof of how the hotel is manipulating Jack, but it could also be the other way around.

Could Danny’s imagination had mixed his father’s desire to stay in the hotel with the

visions he experimented? I mean, could the strong desire of Jack to stay in the hotel

manipulate Danny’s fragile psyche, making him believe that the hotel wants just what his

father wants?

25

F014 F015

Now again, the next scene is very important. Some days later Danny is playing by

himself and notices that the door of room 237 is open. This is the room that Mr. Hallorann

was afraid of, according to Danny when they met. The key is in the keyhole, and Danny,

figuring that it is his mother, gets into the room. Then the action shifts towards Wendy,

who hears Jack screaming very soundly in the Colorado lounge, beside his typewriter. In a

very frightened mood, Jack tells Wendy that he was dreaming that he killed her and

Danny, and after that, he cut them in pieces, just as the previous caretaker had done with

their family. In their conversation, and, for a brief moment, we can feel like Jack has come

back to his senses, and is admitting having gone insane. What until this time had been the

“Id” version of Jack, brought about by the cabin fever, has gone back to the “Ego” version

of him, the one we saw at the beginning.

F016 F017

Just as Wendy is helping Jack to sit down in the chair, we see Danny entering the

room. He is hurt in the neck and in shock. Wendy sees this and confronts Jack about being

him the one who hurt Danny. Jack, perplexed, does not know what to answer, and Wendy

flees with Danny to their room.

Meanwhile, a very angry Jack makes his way into the Golden room, and goes up to

the counter in hopes of finding any alcohol. It is important to remember that Jack used to

26

drink quite a lot, and it was while being drunk when he hurt Danny’s arm three years

before.

Unexpectedly, he addresses a person called Lloyd, and laughs. From behind the

counter, which was empty a moment ago, now sits a barman with a counter full of different

bottles of alcohol.

The conversation between Jack and Lloyd is of extreme importance for the plot, as it

is the first interaction that Jack makes with an entity that should not be there, and, for that,

I am going to address this idea by Roger Ebert that I feel is completely true when

explaining the plot from a psychoanalytic perspective. The idea is condensed in the fact

that every time that Jack sees ghost, there is a mirror present, which implies that he could

be talking to himself (Ebert 2006: 1).

There is also a great addition to this idea which implies that before this conversation

with Lloyd, Jack’s internal persona remains a mystery to the spectator, mostly requiring

him to act as a Shining person and interpret Jack’s real emotions through Danny’s

subjectivity or other visual details (Nelson 2000: 202).

F018 F019

The idea of the mirrors is something I had not realised when I chose to write this

dissertation. But when I started to read several articles and reviews about the movie, many

of them coincided in this aspect: whenever Jack sees a ghost in the movie, there is always a

mirror present. This theory has also been postulated by Antonio Rivera, who has compared

the use of mirrors between The Shining and Eyes Wide Shut (Rivera 2004: 75).

There is only one exception to this rule, and is the scene that tips the scales into the

paranormal explanation. I will return to the matter when I reach that particular scene, but

for now, I want to stick with these pieces of text that I extracted for Mr. Ebert’s review of

the film.

This is the key point for the explanation of Jack’s visions and behaviour. Being of a

weak psyche all along, the stories about the man that killed their family and the disease of

27

the Cabin fever have broken his mind, and he is victim of hallucinations. He could have

perfectly been the one who opened room 237 and attacked Danny in an induced trance due

to the disease. And he could perfectly be imagining Lloyd and all that alcohol due to his

extreme desire for drinking.

In his conversation with Lloyd he overtly insults Wendy, calling her a bitch and a

“sperm bank,”. The truth is that the Wendy from the film is very different from the one in

the novel, much more plain and ugly, but her spirit remains strong and she is very clever.

We are made to see her sometimes such as this one through Jack’s eyes, who labels her as

an irritating presence that does not match up with his chauvinistic, impossible idea of a

mate (Randy 2001: 233).

He also is trying to justify why hurting Danny was unintentional. He says that he

loves him but at the same time he also insults him calling him little fucker. At this point of

the movie, the “Id” part of Jack’s psyche has completely overthrown him. He is venting his

anger towards his family with a vision he himself has created. At that moment Wendy

enters the room and finds it completely empty, no sign of Lloyd or the glass that Jack had

in front of him. She seems very agitated and informs Jack that there is a woman in the

hotel with them, and that she was the one who had strangled Danny.

The next scene shows Dick Hallorann, who is watching TV, only to be contacted by

Danny through his psychic power, telling him that he is in grave danger.

F020 F021

Then the action shifts towards Jack, who is now in room 237, and will confront the

second apparition, also with a mirror always present. In this case, the ghost is the one of a

young woman, just as Danny had told Wendy, who embraces and kisses Jack, only to turn

into an old, rotten version of herself, who starts laughing and trying to get Jack as he

escapes in a fright.

28

This scene represents very well Jack’s inner sexual desire. He does not want Wendy

anymore, he wants to have a younger, prettier woman by his side, and his mind recreates

that same desire, only to twist it in an abhorrent way.

In this scene, there is also a comparative value, which is shared by another of

Kubrick’s films, Lolita. In both there exists the subjective shot, shared by Humbert and

Jack, and there is also a relation between the woman in the Overlook and Charlotte. There

is also the disgusting image of the discomposed old hag, much like the future projection

that Humbert has for Charlotte (Krohn 2007:70).

Apart from that, Baxter attributes Kubrick the sexual imagery of the film, mostly

present in this scene and near the end, when Wendy interrupts a sexual scene between two

men (Baxter 1999: 307).

F022 F023

The following scene shows Dick Hallorann trying to get in contact with the Hotel, as

well as Jack telling Wendy that there was nothing in the room, and that Danny probably

hurt himself. This is a great reaffirmation of the theory that puts Jack in a trance-like state

of mind for several moments of the day due to his illness. Maybe what Danny saw in the

room was really the ghostly apparition of the deceased woman, but maybe his imagination

mixed this with his father beating him again when he was out of his mind, meaning that

due to the high number of episodes that Danny has had seeing the images, he is starting to

mix them with the real world. This event with Danny leads Wendy to tell Jack that they

should take him away from the hotel, as he is clearly suffering. At this moment, Wendy is

reaffirming her motherly instincts and she is also starting to play a more active role in the

plot. Jack, on the contrary, blames her for trying to sink his only chance at being

successful, letting out his Id, Jack angrily confronts her about how he will not be

successful ever again in his life if they leave the hotel, and reaffirms his idea that the

culprit for all of his suffering is Wendy, but he will not let her destroy this for him.

29

The following scene shows Jack alone in the corridors of the hotel, which have

changed out of the blue from being clean to be full of balloons and decorations from what

seems a celebration. Low music can also be heard.

Suddenly, the action shifts to Mr. Hallorann again, who is desperately trying to

communicate with the hotel, as he had felt that Danny was in danger some time ago. He

contacts the warden station down the mountain so they can give them a radio call to see if

everything is okay.

The action returns to Jack, who enters the Golden room, the place where he met the

barman, only to see it full of people dressed like some decades ago, most probably the

same people who appear with him in the picture at the end of the movie, the ones from the

4th of July ball of 1921.

F024

Jack approaches the bar again, and he is greeted by Lloyd again. After being served

another whisky, Jack tries to pay, but Lloyd says that his money is no good there. Jack

feels reluctant about not having to pay, and if he was, indeed, dealing with ghosts, and he

was aware of the fact that he had always been in the hotel with them, I think he would not

have acted that way. What I think is that helped by the negative influence of the hotel,

Jack’s increasing madness is starting to make more vivid and complex hallucinations, to

the point that he feels he belongs in them, but up to a certain point, for he is still in the real

world, even if it is only a little part of him. In the end, he lets his doubts go away and

accepts the reality he thinks he is in, standing from the counter and having a walk.

30

F025 F026

What follows is again another very important part of the plot. The conversation

between Delbert Grady and Jack. Delbert is the waiter that spills a drink over Jack, so,

trying to clean him, they go to the bathroom and then Jack confronts him about his identity.

Just as a reminder, in the scene of Jack’s interview, we hear Mr. Hallorann mention Jack

that in 1970, Charles Grady had murdered his family with an axe. The girls who haunt

Danny being with almost all certainty his daughters. At this time, the same character

presents himself as Delbert, a different name. Jack keeps telling him that he is indeed the

one that killed his family, but Mr. Delbert tells Jack that he is not right, that he, in fact, is

the caretaker, and always has been. My analysis of this conversation is that Jack is, in truth,

confronting his own desire to kill his family, materialized into the character of Delbert

Grady, the desire that Charles Grady had in his own time.

F027 F028

At this point of the conversation, the powers that indeed reside within the hotel

manipulate Jack’s hallucination and tell him that Dick Hallorann is trying to save Danny

because he has contacted him through his power. Jack tells Delbert that this is all Wendy’s

fault, as always. Through the entire conversation, the spectator can clearly see how Jack’s

mental state is so deteriorated that his facial expression is no longer even capable of

staying still, moving his eyes continuously and smiling and then making serious faces all

31

the time. In the end, Delbert tells Jack in a very euphemistic way that he should kill his

family just as he did to his own family, reinforcing the idea that Delbert is indeed Jack’s

inner desire to get rid of his family, but mixed with the cabin fever and the negative

influence of the hotel, this desire has changed into directly killing them.

F029

In the scene that follows this chilling conversation, we can see a distressed Wendy,

crying and smoking in her room, cleverly planning their escape from the hotel. As I have

mentioned before, Wendy’s response to Jack’s madness is not the one that we would have

expected of her at the first compasses of the movie. She is ready to leave Jack because her

main goal is to get Danny to a safe place. She also thinks that the best course of action is to

call the mountain wardens so they know in advance that they are going out from the hotel,

so they can search for them in case they do not make it out. Suddenly, we can hear Danny

saying the famous word “Redrum,” which, backwards, reads “Murder.” When Wendy

enters her room, he finds Danny sitting on his bed, and when trying to speak with him, the

person who answers is not Danny, but Tony. He tells Wendy that Danny has gone away

and that he is not going to wake up. The explanation to this behaviour is that Danny’s weak

psyche has had so much stress in the past days, which, combined with the hotel’s

influence, have caused him a mental breakdown, which has made Tony the main entity

inside Danny’s body. This is also known as DID, or “Dissociative Identity Disorder,” as

explained by Richard Kluft,

DID is a complex, chronic, posttraumatic dissociative psychopathology (Kluft,

1987a; Loewenstein, 1991) characterized by disturbances of memory and identity

(Nemiah, 1980). It is distinguished from other mental disorders by the ongoing

coexistence of relatively consistent but alternating subjectively separate identities

and either recurrent episodes of memory disruption, frank amnesia, or both, and/or

amnesia for a period of noncontemporary autobiographic memory (Kluft 1996: 334).

32

In Danny’s case, Tony’s personality has only arisen when his main personality has

gone through a very horrifying experience, and has decided to leave the body in order to

protect itself. But when Dany was in his own house, we did know that Tony told him to do

certain things or that they even argued between one another, so I think it is safe to say that

even if Tony is another different personality of Danny, he was mostly made up by him as a

defence mechanism instead of having been inside of Danny from the moment he was born.

F030 F031

The next scene features Jack walking in the main hall towards the manager room,

where the radio is located, when the Warden station is trying to contact the hotel. He looks

inside the radio and takes three pieces out, so nor can they get in contact with the hotel nor

can Wendy get in contact with them. The action shifts again to Mr. Hallorann who is

getting increasingly worried about the situation at the hotel because the wardens haven’t

been able to contact them.

A black screen with white letters reading “8 am” informs us of the time of the day,

and after that, we can see a plane, and Mr. Hallorann inside the plane, presumably heading

for the Overlook by himself.

F032

And then we can see Jack typing again in the Colorado lounge, as if nothing had

happened. The scene is mixed with other scenes of Mr. Hallorann arriving to Denver.

33

Where he calls a friend of his from a garage so he can fix him a Snowcat in order to be

able to get to the hotel. From all these Hallorann scenes, we can already see how reliable

and noble this character is. He leaves the security of his home in Florida to go and try to

save Danny and Wendy from the crazed Jack.

F033 F034

After that, we are presented with Wendy and Tony watching TV in their room.

Wendy tells him that she is going to have a talk with Jack and that she will be right back.

Tony’s voice answers her, positive about staying in the room. When leaving, Wendy takes

a baseball bat with her. So, we can guess that she does not trust Jack anymore and finds

him dangerous enough so she has to have a way to defend herself from him.

F035

After that, we can see Wendy arriving to the Colorado lounge, which is now empty.

She seems very nervous and on alert about any sign of Jack being around. She calls Jack

several times but she does not get any response, so she gets close to the typewriter, and is

horrified at what she sees. A repetitive, and, apparently without meaning message written

all over again in the typewriter and in the sheets, that are close to it: “All work and no Play

makes Jack a dull boy.”

34

F036 F037

From behind her we can see Jack approaching, and with a very calm voice asking

Wendy if she likes his work, which both startles and scares her even further. Any grasp of

trust that was left in Wendy is gone by now, and she knows that Jack is completely insane

at this point.

What follows is the most direct confrontation between sanity and insanity in the

whole film, embodied by a scared to the bone Wendy and a mad to the bone Jack. While

their argument about what they should do about Danny and Jack’s responsibility to look

out for the Overlook goes on, we can perfectly see the difference in both characters. While

Wendy is barely capable of answering to Jack, because she is completely devastated, Jack

is mocking her every answer and growing more and more angry at her. To the point that

Wendy starts swinging the bat she brought with her in order to keep Jack away from her.

F038 F039

35

F040 F041

The tension of the scene keeps building until the climax, which happens when

Wendy swings the bat and, firstly, hits Jack in the hand, and then, in the head, which

makes him fall down the stairs. In the last moments of the struggle, the spectator can

clearly see how Jack’s facial expressions are the ones of a complete madman, changing

even his tone of voice several times, always repeating Wendy to give him the bat, so he

can bash her brain.

F042 F043

The next scene starts with Jack, visibly hurt in the head, being dragged through the

kitchen floor by Wendy, as he slowly starts regaining consciousness, but still very much

affected by the contusion he suffered both from the bat and his fall down the stairs. When

we are able to see Wendy herself, we can begin to imagine her plan, she wants to lock Jack

in the pantry so he cannot escape nor hurt them in the hope that someone will come later

and arrest him. There are moments of increasing tension as Jack begins to wake up and

Wendy cannot get to open the door because she did not unlock it correctly. In the end, she

manages to lock Jack inside, and when trying to open the door, we can see him moaning

and grabbing his leg, which with most certainty was sprained or twisted during his fall.

When Jack is finally able to get close to the door, at first, he keeps his aggressive

behaviour towards Wendy, but, when he hears her crying, Jack thinks that being the weak-

36

willed and easy to manipulate woman he thinks he is, and, who at this point of the movie is

not anymore, the best course of action would be to feign regaining sanity and starts to

weep as if he was in real pain, so Wendy pities him and opens the door. When Wendy

states that her intention is to get Danny into the Snowcat so they can leave the hotel, Jack

seems very amused by the idea, and tells Wendy to go and check the radio and the Snowcat

to see if she will really be able to escape using them. As a remainder, we could see Jack

some scenes ago taking the batteries of the radio out so Wendy could not use it, and he has

presumably broken the Snowcat in the same kind of fashion.

F044 F045

After that, we follow Wendy outside, towards the garage where the Snowcat that Mr.

Ullman mentioned to them is. The snow has completely covered the hotel, and is really

difficult to walk or see anything on that condition. When Wendy arrives at the Snowcat,

her fears become real as we can see how the cables of the batteries have been cut out.

We are prompted with another black screen that reads: “4 pm,” meaning that several

hours have passed since the incident with Jack and the sabotage of the Snowcat.

Now this might be one of the most, if not the most important scene of the film, at

least from the point of view of my analysis. We are presented with a sleeping Jack, who is

of course still inside the pantry, when we hear a knocking noise. The person outside of the

pantry is Delbert Grady, who thinks that Jack might not be able to do what he was asked

by him in the end. And refers to Wendy as “Stronger than they imagined”. When asked if

Jack gives the word to be able to kill his family, he agrees. And the door of the pantry is

opened for him.

I want to take a moment and discuss this particular scene, because it is the only one

in the film that cannot easily be explained so the events that happen throughout the story

are caused by Jack’s descent into madness and not because of supernatural entities. The

truth is, no matter how crazy Jack is, he cannot extrapolate this madness into opening that

37

door. Up until now, every ghostly apparition could have been explained by combining both

the Cabin Fever and the negative influence that the Overlook does have to the family.

We have to keep in mind, however, that several hours have gone since the last time

we saw Wendy or Danny, so, for the sake of this essay, I will do my best to convince you

that, again, what we are seeing might not actually be what is really happening.

Just as Jack has lost himself to the cabin fevers, and due to the great amount of stress

that Wendy had to go through, she reached a state of mind similar to Jack’s at some point

during those blank hours, and, out of guilt, opened the pantry to release him. She was

manipulated by the hotel too, but not in a very strong manner because Wendy’s strength of

mind is far greater than Jack’s, in spite of what it may look like through the film. And,

from my point of view, the hotel decided to give Jack that last vision to see if he was

worthy of knowing that Wendy had opened that door for him, instead of leaving him there,

without any chance for him to try to open the door again. This is the best explanation I can

give about what really happens in this scene, which is, as I have mentioned before, the one

and only scene which cannot be easily explained with a psychoanalytic approach in the

whole movie.

F046 F047

After that important scene, the action is transferred towards the outside of the hotel,

where a Snowcat can be seen at the end of the road that leads to the hotel, driving towards

it. This Snowcat is driven by Dick Hallorann, who is coming to rescue Wendy and Danny.

38

F048

We have some shots of him approaching the hotel when the action changes to Danny,

or, at this moment, Tony, who musters again the word “Redrum.” He approaches Wendy’s

bed and takes the knife she previously took herself from the kitchen, and then proceeds to

take her red lipstick. Slowly, and without a correct position of the letters. Danny writes the

word on the bathroom door. He suddenly starts shouting, which wakes up and frightens

Wendy. When embracing him to stop his screams, she gets horrified as she reads through

the reflection of the mirror what Danny was trying to tell her: “Murder.”

F049

At the same moment, a loud banging noise can be heard from the door, which ends

up being Jack, who has armed himself with an axe. Just as Delbert Grady did in his own

time to kill his family. Jack starts axing the door down. And Wendy takes Danny inside the

bathroom. I want to note that Wendy does not seem extremely surprised about Jack being

there, which reinforces my assumption of her being who let him out.

39

F050

While Jack is finishing destroying the door, Wendy opens up the small bathroom

door, and seeing how she cannot escape through the hole herself, she carries Danny and

helps him go through the gap. In other circumstances, the fall would have been lethal. But

because of the snow, there is a conglomeration by the walls of the hotel which makes

Danny slide until reaching the ground level.

F051

Now comes what must be one of the most memorable scenes in the whole history of

cinema. After making a reference to the children’s tale “The Three Little Pigs”, as if he

was the Big Bad Wolf, Jack proceeds to bash the bathroom door with his axe, to a

completely horrified Wendy, who is seeing her death very near if Jack succeeds in his

attempt. Jack finally mages to break enough space of the door to get his head inside, and

says his famous phrase: “Here’s Johnny!”. But, when trying to get inside the bathroom,

Wendy slashes his hand, making him scream in pain and leave the door.

40

F052 F053

Suddenly, the action shifts to Mr. Hallorann again, who is now seeing from afar the

lights of the Overlook. I want to point out that at this point of the movie, the music really

helps to communicate to the spectator that feeling of terror and insanity that is now

everywhere, as we approach the climax of the film. The action changes into the bathroom

again, where a frantic Wendy starts hearing the engine of Mr. Hallorann’s Snowcat. Jack

hears it too, and realizes that he is the person who Delbert Grady told him to be aware of,

as he had been called to the hotel by Danny. For a brief moment, both characters remain

speechless and try to catch their breaths, as we see the Snowcat slowly arriving towards the

main entrance.

We are presented again with Danny, who is running through the corridors of the

hotel, just as Wendy told him. Cleverly enough, he decides to hide inside a big drawer.

Next thing we see is Jack, dragging his feet through the kitchen, where Danny is hiding.

The action shifts yet again, and turns towards Wendy, who, seemingly regaining her

senses, understands that Jack has left to kill the person who was in the Snowcat, and tries

to leave the bathroom to try to save him.

We have a few seconds of Mr. Hallorann going through the main door, while also

being witnesses of Jack heading towards the reception hall. He takes a glimpse of the

elevator, which is the one who, in Danny’s vision at the start of the film was opening and

letting out of it a sea of blood.

As Jack gets closer, we can hear Mr. Hallorann shouting if someone was there.

There are a few more seconds of him walking through the reception, until the moment Jack

jumps out from behind a pillar and stabs him in the chest with the axe. At the same

moment, we can see Danny screaming, as if he felt the pain too. This particular moment of

the film is much more important than it would seem at first glance, because this marks the

moment when Jack finally becomes a murderer. He had tried to kill Wendy and Danny, but

up until the moment he kills Mr. Hallorann he had remained unable to do so, which could

41

also mean that he was not really able to take a life. This scene proves that theory wrong,

and takes away all doubts about the thought that maybe Jack would not be able to really

kill his son in the end. We also need to remember that Dick and Danny where kind of

connected by the Shinning. His scream alerts Jack, who, smiling, starts running towards

the kitchen, leaving Mr. Hallorann’s dead body on the floor.

F054 F055

While screaming his name, Jack gets closer towards Danny’s hiding place. Knowing

that is a matter of time now that Jack finds and kills him, Danny decides to outrun him. At

the same moment, Wendy is seen wandering through the hotel looking for Danny: instead

of shouting, she whispers his name. At this point of the film, the influence of the hotel is so

great, and probably fuelled by Dick Hallorann’s death, that even Wendy starts seeing these

completely bizarre scenes, as for example a man dressed in a bear suite giving oral sex to a

man dressed in formal clothing. The truth is that they do not ever get to interact with each

other. So, this could also mean a step towards the cabin fever that Wendy is yet again

suffering, combining the loss of Danny and the realization that his husband is a murderer

and has gone completely mad, it is just natural for Wendy to start losing her mind as well.

F056

Next, we are presented yet again to Jack, who, in his pursuit of Danny, gets to the

point where he thinks that he may be outside, so he turns on the outside lamp posts. Danny,

42

who was hidden behind the Snowcat, again comes to the realization that staying there

would mean his death, so he starts running towards the maze, followed by Jack, shouting

his name again and again. The next moments of the film feature Danny running from Jack

inside the maze, followed by another scene with Wendy. After seeing Mr. Hallorann’s

dead body on the floor, she is presented with another apparition of a man in a formal suite,

and also sees a ghostly version of the reception hall, full of spider webs and skeletons

dressed, again, in a formal fashion.

F057 F058

Jack’s pursuit of Danny inside the maze gets to the point where Danny, in a moment

of great intelligence, realizes that Jack would eventually get him just by following his steps

on the snow. Making an outstanding decision in a critical moment like that, he decides to

backtrack on his own steps on the snow so Jack gets confused and stops following him.

F059

The following scene featuring the frightened to the bone Wendy, is, in fact, a very

special one. As she is faced with the infamous elevator on Danny’s vision at the start of the

movie. It is curious that in the end he was not the real witness of the deeply disturbing

scene, but his mother.

43

F060 F061

After that, a very exhausted Jack arrives at the point where Danny had backtracked to

hide his real location. Just as Danny predicted, Jack becomes confused by Danny’s plan,

and goes away from the place where he really is. Fully aware that this is his only chance to

survive, Danny follows his own steps to get out of the maze, while a visibly affected by the

freezing temperatures Jack keeps looking for him. In the end, Danny and Wendy finally

reunite, embrace, and go away from the hotel in Mr. Hallorann’s Snowcat.

At the same time Wendy and Danny escape the hotel, we are shown the final

moments of Jack, who, now babbling Danny’s name due to the exhaustion that he is

suffering added to his probably severe injuries from when he was thrown down the stairs,

and his complete mental breakdown, decides to sit for a moment and rest.

F062 F063

Those are Jack’s final moments, as the next shot we see is the one of him at the next

morning, completely frozen inside the maze. It is very important to note that the maze was

not in King’s book, so these final scenes were all invented by Kubrick. In the written

version, Jack dies in an explosion from the heater which Wendy had manipulated in order

to make the hotel blow. For Antonio Rivera, the maze represents the magic inside the

hotel, as well as Jack’s tortured mind, and also the womb, where Danny has to return in

order to save himself (Rivera 2004: 76).

44

The last scene of the movie features the camera closing in to a photograph of the ball

that was held in the golden room of the 4th of July 1921. Jack can be seen just in the middle

of the photograph, which gives a meaning to Delbert’s words when they were inside the

bathroom. He is the caretaker of the Overlook hotel, and he has always been.

F064 F065

45

5. CONCLUSIONS

The Shining by Kubrick is not a great ghost story, nor is it a faithful adaptation of

Stephen King’s novel. It is something new and different, and it is because the great

difference that exists between the original and the film that I was able to make this

dissertation. This movie is the perfect example on how cinema is able to represent horror

and the unsettling in a million different ways. In this particular case, with the psychology

of the characters. Through my hours of research about the film, I came across many

authors who wrote that something that they did not like about the film as a product was

that many other people just praised Kubrick for directing and did not mention the work the

actors did in the movie, and I stand with them.

With this dissertation, I intended to give a new interpretation to Kubrick’s film,

because I thought that given the obscure nature of the movie, with many elements being

manipulated and changed by him, it could be viable to do so. And going through the

process of analyzation I have realised that the idea could fit very well in the standards of

film analysis, it was solid and many scholars, all of them quoted in this paper, shared some

of my ideas and theories. By doing so, I have created a piece of work that enables whoever

reads it to be able to understand this famous movie in a completely different way, as it

happened to me. A movie is like a person, complex. It is not something to be explained in

just a few words and with an absolute truth, there are always ramifications and different

paths to be taken while approaching the meaning of the images that are being shown before

us.

Almost every narrative resource is used masterfully in the film, the use of camera

angles, the Steadycam, whose first important appearance in cinema was in this movie, the

lighting and the music. Everything was thought by the millimetre by Kubrick. The

structure of the movie was also carefully planned. The film starts with jumps in time that

encompass even a month, time which only gets reduced as we go through the film, scaling

towards weeks, then days, and finally hours.

Every major character of the movie is the embodiment of a certain part of the human

mind, first of all we have Jack, the repression, the id, the monster inside the American

stereotype of father. For him, the Overlook is not a curse, it is a gift. His opportunity to let

loose his inner self and finally be able to be successful and recognized. Wendy represents

the ego, the restrain, the resolution. She appears as plain, normal, not really good at

anything apart from bothering Jack. But her strength of mind makes her invulnerable to the

46

hotel’s influence, and it fears her. It knows that she is much more dangerous than Danny,

she has the conviction to protect the ones she loves.

Danny represents the tormented psyche, the struggle between consciousness and

unconsciousness. He is fragile but very powerful, and needs the protection of a family,

Wendy fulfils that role, but Danny knows that Jack is not someone to be trusted. Instead,

he makes his own fatherly figure, Tony, a fragment of his own personality that guides and

helps him.

And lastly, Mr. Halloran embodies the Super Ego. The noble convictions. He gives

everything up, including his own life, to save Danny. This is not something that a normal

individual would have done, and he more than anyone knew that the hotel was a dangerous

place. Regardless of that fact, he goes there without a second thought, he is the antithesis

of Jack, a man without family who is willing to sacrifice everything for them, against a

man with a family willing to sacrifice everything to get rid of them.

47

6. REFERENCES

Allen Nelson, Thomas. 2000. Kubrick, inside a film artist’s maze. Indianapolis: Indiana

University Press.

Baxter, John. 1999. Stanley Kubrick: biografía. Madrid: T & B Editores.

Berardinelli, James. “Shining, The (United States, 1980) A movie review by James

Berardinelli”. http://www.reelviews.net/reelviews/shining-the (Accessed

14/07/2017)

Duncan, Paul. 2003. Stanley Kubrick: Filmografía completa. Köln: Taschen.

Ebert, Roger. 1980. “The Shinning: great movie review”.

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-the-shining-1980 (Accessed

4/7/2017)

Freud, Sigmund. 2010 (1923). The Ego and The Id. USA. Pacific Publishing Studio.

Hill, Rodney. 2008 (2005) The Shining. The Stanley Kubrick archives. Ed. Alison Castle.

Köln: TASCHEN.

King, Stephen. 2012 (1977). The Shining. United States: Random House Lcc Us.

Kluft, Richard. 1996. “Dissociative Identity Disorder”. Handbook of Dissociation.

Theoretical, Empirical and Clinical Perspectives. Eds. Larry K. Michelson and

William J. Ray. New York: Plennum Press. 337-366.

Kolker, Robert Philip. 1988 (1980). A cinema of loneliness. Oxford: Oxford University

Press.

Krohn, Bill. 2007. El libro de Stanley Kubrick; colección grandes directores. Madrid: El

País. Trans. Natalia Ruiz Martínez. 70

Kubrick, Stanley (dir.) 1962. Lolita. USA/United Kingdom: A.A. Productions Ltd.

Kubrick, Stanley (dir.) 1980. The Shining. USA/United Kingdom: Hawk Films Ltd.

Kubrick, Sranley (dir.) 1999. Eyes Wide Shut. USA/United Kingdom: Warner Bros.

Maslin, Janet. 1980. “Movie Review: The Shinning”.

http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=EE05E7DF1738E270BC4B51DFB3668

38B699EDE (Accessed 4/7/2017)

Nathan, Ian. 2012. “The Shinning Review”. http://www.empireonline.com/movies/shining-

2/review/ (Accessed 3/7/2017)

Polo, Juan Carlos. 1999 (1986). Stanley Kubrick. Madrid: J.C. Clementine.

Rasmussen, Randy. 2001 Stanley Kubrick, Seven Films Analyzed. Jefferson, North

Carolina, and London: McFarland & Company, Inc.

48

Rivera García, Antonio. 2004. “En las fronteras del realismo: el cine de Stanley Kubrick”.

Cine y prospectiva social: actas de las I Jornadas celebradas en noviembre de 2003

dentro del programa "Plano a plano" del Departamento de Cultura de la Diputación

de Almería. Eds. J.A. Baca Martín and A. Galindo Hervás. Almería: Diputación de

Almería. 49-92.

Zunzunegui, Santos. 2007. “El resplandor, de Stanley Kubrick (The Shining, USA, 1980)”.

Contracampo. Ensayos sobre teoría e historia del cine. Eds. Jenaro Talens and

Satos Zunzunegui. Madrid: Cátedra. 586-590.

49

7. ANNEX

El resplandor, de Stanley Kubrick no es una gran película de fantasmas, y tampoco

es una gran adaptación de la novela de King que sirvió como base para la película. Es algo

nuevo y diferente, y es gracias a esa gran diferencia existente entre novela y película que

me ha sido posible escribir mi trabajo. Esta película es el ejemplo perfecto de como el cine

puede representar el horror y la incomodidad de miles de formas diferentes. En este caso

en particular, mediante la psicología de los personajes. A lo largo de mis horas de estudio

de la película, me encontré con muchos autores que compartían el pensamiento de que algo

negativo sobre el film era que la inmensa mayoría del éxito que tuvo fue dedicada a

Kubrick, dejando de lado a los actores, y yo pienso de igual manera. Es tremendamente

complicado para alguien, incluso un actor, poder fingir locura si no sabe lo que es estar

loco, o fingir calma cuando la realidad es que está a un solo error de ser asesinado por un

ser querido. En esta película, los actores lo dieron todo de ellos mismos para poder

representar de manera magistral la locura y en general todos los recovecos de la mente

humana.

Con este trabajo, he intentado darle una nueva interpretación a la película de

Kubrick, principalmente porque pensé que, dada la naturaleza obtusa de la película, y

dados sus numerosos cambios con respecto a la novela, podría ser algo posible de hacer. Y

avanzando en el trabajo me di cuenta de que la idea podía encajar de buena manera con los

estándares de análisis cinematográficos, era una idea sólida y muchos críticos de cine y

eruditos en el tema compartían mis teorías e ideas. De ese modo, he creado un trabajo que,

en mi opinión, consigue que cualquiera que lo lea sea capaz de entender la película en un

contexto completamente diferente, como me ha pasado a mí mismo. Una película es, al

igual que una persona, compleja. No es algo que se pueda explicar en unas pocas palabras

o con una verdad absoluta, siempre posee diferentes caminos a seguir para abarcar las

imágenes que se nos muestran.

Prácticamente todos los recursos narrativos están usados de forma magistral en el

film. El uso de los ángulos de cámara, la Steadycam, de la cual la primera aparición

importante fue en esta película, las luces y el sonido. Todo fue pensado al milímetro por

Kubrick. La estructura de la película también sirve como recurso narrativo, empezando con

unos saltos temporales de hasta un mes, que van disminuyendo en intensidad y longitud,

50

pasando luego a semanas, luego días y finalmente horas, hasta llegar al clímax de la

acción.

En mi opinión, cada personaje principal es la personificación de los elementos de la

mente que he ido mencionando a lo largo del trabajo.

Primero tenemos a Jack, la personificación del Id. El monstruo detrás del típico padre

de familia americano. Para él, el Overlook no es una maldición, es un regalo. Es su

oportunidad de desatar su verdadero yo y ser finalmente reconocido y exitoso.

Por otra parte, Wendy representa el Yo, la mesura, la resolución. En un principio se

nos presenta como una mujer simple y sin ningún atractivo o habilidad, aparte de molestar

a Jack, pero su fortaleza de mente la hace invulnerable a la influencia del hotel, y esto el

hotel lo sabe, y la teme, incluso más que a Danny o al señor Hallorann.

Danny representa la psique atormentada, y la pugna entre la consciencia e

inconsciencia, es un niño frágil pero muy poderoso, aunque necesita la protección y la

seguridad de una familia. Wendy consigue apoyarlo, pero desde un principio Danny sabe

muy bien que Jack no es de fiar. En vez de eso, Danny crea su propia figura paterna, Tony,

un fragmento de su propia personalidad que le guía y le ayuda a lo largo de su estancia por

el infernal hotel.

Finalmente tenemos la figura de Dick Hallorann, el cocinero negro del hotel, que

representa el Superyó. Dada su naturaleza moral, lo sacrificará todo, incluso su vida, para

salvar a Danny y Wendy. Esto no es algo que un individuo normal hubiera hecho, y él más

que nadie sabía lo peligroso que es el Overlook, y el hecho de que fuera hacia allí sin

pensárselo dos veces refuerza su imagen de la moralidad personificada. Hallorann es la

antítesis de Jack, un hombre sin familia dispuesto a darlo todo por salvarla, frente a un

padre de familia dispuesto a darlo todo por deshacerse de ella.