The ShiningSynopsis

by Mark Campbell

Act I

Jack Torrance has been hired as the winter caretaker for the Overlook Hotel in a remote part of the Rockies and arrives there with his wife Wendy and son Danny at the end of the hotel’s season. The family meets the hotel manager Stuart Ullman, its custodian Bill Watson, and its cook, Dick Hallorann. Watson instructs Jack about boiler maintenance and reveals a few secrets about the hotel’s dark past, while Hallorann identifies Danny’s psychic abilities— which he calls “the shining”—and tells the boy to call out his name if the Torrance family is ever in danger. Ullman, Watson, and Hallorann leave for the season.

One evening not long after the Torrances’ arrival, Danny has disturbing visions. As Wendy consoles Danny with a lullaby, Jack recalls the abuse his father Mark inflicted on him when he was a child. Danny utters a curious message (“redrum”) as he falls asleep which she attibutes to his bedtime reading, Treasure Island.

Jack finds boxes of memorabilia in the basement and learns more about the hotel’s past, including the murders of the Grady family, the suicide of Mrs. Massey in Room 217, and a mafia execution involving Horace Derwent. An invitation to a New Year’s Eve masked ball drops from a scrapbook. Jack’s sudden obsession with the hotel worries Wendy and she demands that they leave—but Jack refuses.

A month later, Wendy and Danny are awakened by strange noises in the hotel. Jack investigates, hears a party in the ballroom, and discovers an oversized croquet mallet that has been placed there.

Danny enters Room 217. In the hotel office, a ranger on CB radio warns Jack about an approaching blizzard. Suddenly, the voice becomes that of Jack’s father, telling him to kill his family. Jack smashes the radio with the croquet mallet. Wendy tries to calm him, and Danny enters bruised and wet with lipstick marks after visiting Room 217. As Jack rallies to protect his family, the hotel’s apparitions appear and possess him. Danny cries out for Hallorann, as the first snow begins to fall.

Act II

In the basement, Delbert Grady appears to Jack and urges him to murder his family. In the caretaker’s quarters, Danny warns Wendy that the hotel’s spirits have possessed his father. Jack spirals further into madness at the imagined New Year’s Eve masked ball where his father makes a guest appearance and again attempts to murder his family.

Having heard Danny’s cries, Hallorann arrives at the hotel via snowcat. Danny finally stands up to his father and escapes. The ghosts appear again, warning Jack that the boiler is about to explode. In the basement, Jack resolves to let his family live; when Wendy, Danny and Hallorann are out of harm’s way, he allows the boiler to explode. The hotel bursts into flames.

More than a year later, Wendy and Danny are staying in a cabin at a hotel in Maine where Hallorann now works as a cook. While Wendy observes, Hallorann urges Danny to try to move on in his life and be strong for his mother.