The ShiningThe Novel

King’s first two novels were set in Maine, his home state, and for his third effort he was ready for a change of scenery. He opened an atlas to a random page, pointed at a random spot, and that’s how The Shining ended up set in Boulder, CO. For research, he and his wife Tabitha checked into the Stanley Hotel, an opulent historical hotel in Estes Park, Colorado. Unbeknownst to them, the couple had arrived for the last days of the season; they were the only guests in the 109-room hotel. They had dinner in the grand dining room, just the two of them, serenaded by piped-in background music, surrounded by tables with the chairs placed on top of them, ready to close up shop. In the author’s words,  “That night I dreamed of my three-year-old son running through the corridors, looking back over his shoulder, eyes wide, screaming. He was being chased by a firehose. I woke up with a tremendous jerk, sweating all over, within an inch of falling out of bed. I got up, lit a cigarette, sat in a chair looking out the window at the Rockies, and by the time the cigarette was done, I had the bones of the book firmly set in my mind”.

The Shining tells the story of a family in crisis, taking their last shot at a normal life. Jack Torrance is an alcoholic, but is several months sober at the time the novel begins. He, his long-suffering wife Wendy, and their son Danny, who had been the victim of Jack’s physical abuse in the past, travel to a luxury hotel in Colorado. Jack has been hired as caretaker of the property for the long winter season when the hotel is closed, and his family will live in the hotel with him. Due to its remote location in the Rocky Mountains, the hotel is snowed in annually, with no access except via snowcat or snowmobile. As the novel progresses, the isolation takes its toll on the family and Jack descends into psychosis. Is it purely Jack’s insanity, or has he been possessed by an evil force, even the hotel itself? Regardless, the novel unfolds from slowly mounting dread to outright terror in its horrifying climax.

The novel is heartbreaking, with many inner monologues illuminating Jack’s internal struggles as he tries to be the good dad his own father never was. Jack’s struggles with alcoholism and the fears of harming his family mirror, and potentially helped exorcise King’s own fears and struggles as a recovering alcoholic and struggling young father. Esquire magazine writer Neil McRobert ranks it number five on his list of King novels, summarizing the plot in this fashion: “It’s about a man trying desperately to hold his family and his sanity together in the face of economic and demonic pressure.” Though a product of its time, the novel remains a classic of the horror genre. Modern readers still can’t put this novel down, no matter how many sleepless nights it may cause, or what dreams of terrifying topiaries may haunt them for days after that final page is turned.