The Role Of Overlook Hotel In Stephen King’S “The Shining”

Jack Torrance of Stephen Kings “The Shining” is a man with demons and alcoholism, and meets his untimely end in the Overlook hotel, a place where the boiler creeps and the hedges hide sinister intentions. Throughout the novel the Overlook has a strange way of bringing back the mistakes made in Jacks past and amplifying the feelings that came with those mistakes. By being isolated in the Overlook, the hotel becomes a looking glass into Jacks destructive soul and torments him with his faults until he bends and breaks, allowing the spirit of the hotel to weld to his own.

Early in the novel, Jack is shown to be a recovering alcoholic who lost his job teaching due to a violent outburst toward a student named George. It is also established early on that once while in a drunken rage, Jack had broken Danny’s arm while attempting to scold him. This was an action that had in a way sealed his fate, as Jack felt that ever since that day Wendy has hated him for it. Before beginning his stay at the Overlook Jack had been abstaining from alcohol entirely with success, but after living and working in the Overlook, his habits from his drinking days began to come back despite never picking up a glass. As time continues, Jack finds himself bothered by more persistent thoughts of having a drink and thinks to himself how it would be alright if he just had a few. The hotel responds to his cravings by materializing alcohol of all varieties, further tempting Jack to do as the hotel desires. After getting drunk for the first time in years, Jack had been beaten by the hotel. The phrase “take your medicine” is found in many of Danny’s dreams often being shouted from the monster chasing him and begins to develop significance through its recurrence. The words true significance is not revealed until Jack thinks back to his childhood, when he recalls how his father mercilessly beat his mother with a cane once at dinner. His memory includes looking down at the man who was his father being restrained by his siblings, no longer a father but a monster being held down yelling “you’ll take your medicine”.

The influence of the hotel was able to infiltrate Jack’s mind and altered him to the point where he sat thinking that his father was misunderstood and was right in the act of brutalizing his mother. With the hotels grip so firm on Jack, he had practically become one with the hotel doing exactly what it had wanted all along. When the boiler of the hotel basement exploded, all the building aggression, fear and hate were freed from Jack, just as the building pressure was freed from the confines of the boiler’s metallic basin. As observed however, a pressure release of that scale is often violent, people and boilers alike.