Diego Trejo Bejarano

Jack's Ostracism in The Shining 

I'm hiding out where you can't see

Behind the wall, in the back room

And I'm crawling slowly through the dark

And feeling for a punch line

- Daniel Johnston

Whether a psychological thriller or an explicit horror film, The Shining depicts the disturbing disintegration of a family located in an isolated hotel, where the unstable aspiring writer Jack Torrance has been hired as the off-season caretaker. Resenting the harsh conditions of the hotel, and his evident inability to work, Jack, under the spell of some mysterious supernatural force, begins to behave erratically towards his wife, Wendy, and his little son, Danny, who has a natural psychic gift. The machinery of the plot is lubricated by three main motifs: isolation, desperation and madness. From the early start of the film this mototrized thematic engine heads towards an inevitable collision: Jack's lunacy and his failed attempt to kill Wendy and Danny.

Before the first encounter between Jack and the managers of The Overlook Hotel there are a couple of scenes, in the surrounding area and inside the building, that emphasize the isolated configuration of the natural and artificial landscape; a sort of prolepsis that foretells the evolution and impact of time and place in Jack's mind and its repercussion on the outside. Stuart Ullman, one of the managers, tells Jack that the job is not very demanding, but, with subtlety and discretion, says that the cruel winter can lead to a feeling of loneliness and solitude. Apparently, this is exactly what Jack wants, because he has "a new writing project." Mr. Ullman also mentions the tragedy of Charles Grady, the previous caretaker, who, after suffering a mental breakdown, killed his family with an axe and then committed suicide. It seems that a condition called "cabin fever" was responsible for Grady's insanity. "The old timers called it a case of cabin fever, a kind of claustrophobic reaction when people are secluded together for long periods of time." Jack even fools around with an eerie smile telling Stuart Ullman that this is not going to happen to him. According to Jack, Wendy will be fascinated because she is "a confirmed ghost story and horror film addict." This grotesquely humoristic remark is an ironic wink of what will happen later with him, his family, and the hotel as a haunted background for Jack's psychotic outburst.

One month later after they have relocated, Jack begings to show the first signs of ostracism. He sleeps heavily until 11:30 in the morning when Wendy wakes him up and leaves his breakfast in their room. She suggests a little walk outside, "it is a gorgeous day", but Jack refuses because he wants to write. This is the first scene where Jack neglects the company of his family and the interaction with the exterior in order to be by himself "working." While eating his breakfast in bed, Jack tells Wendy: "I fell in love with it right away. When I came up here for my interview, it was as though I had been here before. I mean, we all have moments of déjà vu, but this was ridiculous. It was almost as though I knew what was going to be around every corner." Pretty soon afterwards, there is a direct frontal shot at the type writer with a blank page in it; behind, the sound of a ball being thrown at the wall announces Jack's stress as his incompetence to work properly. These first signs of alienation are masterfully exemplified when Wndy and Danny are outside having a walk on the maze. This scene slowly vanishes and melts with a shot at Jack inside the hotel roaming around with his ball. He comes across a tiny model of the labyrinth, which he looks closely as if he were watching his family from the sky. The panoramic view of the tiny model becomes again a shot of the real scale maze, where Wendy and Danny are happily drifting.

A couple of days later we see the natural consequences of Jack's much desired loneliness. When Wendy disturbs his work asking him about his day, Jack, intolerant and mad, hurriedly hides the sheet of paper in which he had been writing, and, with a very angry and irrational tone, tells her that every time she comes to his working space he gets distracted; he hits his head with his hand and rips the previous sheet of paper. He then proceeds to explain the "new rule" in an insulting way: when he is there, typing or not, she is not allowed to get in because it means he is working. "Why don't you start right now and get the fuck out of here." This is the first time he behaves openly aggresive towards Wendy. There is a desperate tone in Jack's attitude. He is not progressing in his "new writing project" as he had expected and probably sees his family as an obstacle. The isolation only accentuates his desperation. Wendy leaves hurt, perplexed, and a little bit scared. This tense separation from his family only increases when two days later Wendy and Danny are playing in the snow and Jack is again alone inside the hotel, looking at them from a window with a manic face.

The weird and unpleasant prelude of Jack's mental breakdown occurs when Danny goes to their room for a small plastic truck and finds his dad sitting alone in the bed staring at the wall with a tired and pale face. Jack awkwardly hugs Danny and both have an odd conversation. "How is it doing, Doc? Having a good time?" "Dad, do you feel bad?" "No, just a little bit tired." "Then why don't you go to sleep?" "I can't, I have too much to do." "Dad, do you like this hotel?" "Yeah, I do. I love it. Don't you?" "I guess so." "Good, I want you to like it here. I wish we could stay here forever and ever and ever." "Dad?" "What?" "You would never hurt mommy and me, would you?" "What do you mean? Did your mother ever say that to you, that I would hurt you?" "No, dad." "You're sure?" "Yes, dad." "I love you more than anything else in the world. I'd never do anything to hurt you, never. You know that, don't you?" "Yes, dad." The tense string music echoes Jack's psychological instability, which is taking him near a dead end road: madness.

After Danny gets into room 237, Wendy, busy in the laundry room, hears Jack's violently tormented scream and goes hastily to his working place. Jack, anguished and confused, confesses that he had a nightmare where he killed Wendy and Danny with an axe. "Oh God! I must be losing my mind!" Danny suddendly arrives in an almost catatonic state (dizzy, mute, injured, and sucking his thumb), and while an alarmed Wendy inspects him and hugs him, Jack looks at them with an extremely demented face, disturbed and insane. "You did this to him, didn't you!? You son of a bitch! How could you! How could you!" Jack babbles nonsense and remains with the same nasty face. After Wendy goes with Danny, Jack roams around by himself doing insane movements with his arms, head and torso. He finally goes into the ballroom where, after a cryptic apparition, he has a drink and a peculiar conversation with Lloyd, a ghostly barman. Out of nowhere, Wendy gets in the salon and hysterically informs Jack about room 237, where a woman supposedly tried to strangle Danny. More dazed than lucid, Jack goes to ckeck the room and finds a gorgeous naked young girl; embracing and kissing her he notices that she is actually an old repulsive woman. Completely deranged, terrified, confused and nauseated Jack slowly goes away while the scary laughter of the woman echoes everywhere. The tense music falls to pieces; a sort of destruction that mirrors Jack's state of mind. He goes back to Wendy and acts as if he were in his senses, even suggesting that Danny hurt himself on purpose. At Wendy's suggestion to leave the hotel, Jack finally explodes and brutally screams at her: "I have let you fuck my life so far, but I'm not going to let you fuck this up!" He leaves and Wendy cries in an anguished desperation. Jack drifts through the empty corridors and finally returns to the ballroom where a party is being held. After having a couple of free drinks, he clashes with Charles / Delbert Grady, the previous caretaker now disguised as a butler. When Mr. Grady takes jack to the bathroom to clean his spotted jacket, they have a bizarre conversation about the past, present and future of both in connection with the hotel and their families. Jack is finally convinced that he has always been the caretaker and that the situation with his family has to be dealt with precision and accuracy. While Wendy is truggling to figure out a way to leave the hotel, Jack, completely out of his mind, messes around with the phone, the radio and the snowplow, leaving the hotel without any internal or external communication devices.

The breaking point of the film is when Wendy finally reads what Jack has been writing all along: "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." This sentence explains, paradoxically, all the things that Jack has experienced while staying in The Overlook Hotel that have lead to his lunatic state of mind. The scene has all the process of isolation, desperation and madness, expertly developed through the tense music, the alarming contrast between Jack and Wendy and the direct shots at the nonsense typed on the sheets of paper. From then on is a tormented struggle between Wendy's frail determination to escape with his son and Jack's 'work', which has changed from writing and taking care of the hotel to taking care of his family.

Jack's ostracism from his family and the surroundings of the hotel led him, slowly but firmly, to a mental stage where there was no return. His self-indicted loneliness was meant to help him writing the new project, but after rejecting every single opportunity to spend time with his family, inside or outside, he began to grow desperate because he was unable to start his work. Whether he was actually mad or was he possessed by some evil spirit, I can only say that his ongoing solitude and desperation put him in a frail state of mind where madness was only a few steps away.