Jack Torrance was
an alcoholic man with anger issues that was mainly affected by the ghosts of
the hotel. Jack is a very violent person; we can infer that when he was a
child, his father mistreated him, producing a mental disturbance on him. When
Jack gets drunk, he lets his past take control of him, making him repeat the
same pattern as his dad. In one of his binge he broke Danny’s arm. The violence
and the drinking problem are characteristics that Jack and Mr. Grady, the
former caretaker had in common, making Jack more vulnerable to this ghost.
It is well known
that isolation and the lack of sunlight can cause serious effects on people.
During his tenure on the hotel, Jack never left the premises. For example, when
Wendy asked him to go out with her and Danny so they could walk around and take
some fresh air, Jack refused to go, he remained in the hotel writing his book.
Jack applied for
the job on the Overlook Hotel after he was fired from his previous occupation,
this situation made him feel depressed, that is why he wanted to feel useful
and decided to write a book. Scenes later, Wendy saw Jack’s writing and she
finds out that he has been typing the same phrase trough all the pages,
"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy". This action upsets Jack
and made him try to punish her. It is in this scene, where we can see that
Jack’s madness started heighten, because he thought that Wendy was criticizing
him and his writing.
When wandering in
the Gold room, Jack meets Mr. Delbert Grady, who introduce himself as a waiter.
Grady allegedly spilled a glass of water over Jack, and offered to wipe it off
in the bathroom; this with the intention of speaking with him in private. While
being there, Jack noticed that Grady was actually the caretaker who killed his
own family. Grady told him that he must educate properly his son and wife
because they are causing trouble around the hotel. Like Jack, Delbert also had
drinking problems and they seemed to have the same psychological issues, that
is why the evil spirit of the hotel chose him.
His mental
illness added to all the stress caused by the hotel spirits, and the depression
he was going through, made Jack more vulnerable to the presence of the hotel.
And by this, Jack became a menace to Wendy and Danny, because in his mind and
according to what Grady told him, the right thing to do was to punish them. The
spirits of the Overlook Hotel seemed to have a particular interest in Jack;
therefore, this could mean that the ghosts looked for the most vulnerable
person in the hotel to take control of him and complete a cycle of murder.
No comments:
Post a Comment