There have been few authors as synonymous with the late 20th century quite like Stephen King. He has the ability to use horror to explore humanity's greatest fears. With a prolific body of work that continues to this day, he has continually found ways to create essential narratives around various genres. In the case of his third book "The Shining," he has pushed himself to create the essential haunted house story, using Jack Torrance as a protagonist with a dark-spirited past of his own, making one wonder if staying isolated for the winter season was the best call. Whatever it may be, the book excels as one of his earliest hits, able to reflect his gift of prose that lingers and carries the audience through his demented thoughts while making it a terrifying portrait of his own alcoholism. The results are one of his best distilled stories, promising decades of crazy ideas to come.
One of King's strongest elements is the lingering dread that he puts in the opening chapters. Without directly calling something scary, he uses details of decay to reflect the reason for the audience to sway suspicions, finding leaky pipes as a metaphor for the slow mental decline, the air falling out of the Torrances as they decide to be caretakers for a winter season. They will be locked up at The Overlook Hotel, which works out well for Jack. He wants to write his novel and thinks alone time that can do him good. The issue is more that maybe his family doesn't want to be there, constantly fighting their own struggles with insanity as they wander hallways, itself filled with the demons of yesteryear, finding so much tragic history locked behind doors.
The vividness with which King writes The Overlook Hotel is one of his greatest achievements. He does a great job of establishing mystery and paranoia, where one minor grievance paves the way for future problems. A small accident that shouldn't be seen as a big deal suddenly conveys a bigger struggle among Jack's internal demon. Even the fact that his son Danny has a spiritual being known as "the shining" suggests that there's something more to this building, that the past is coming to haunt everyone in strange ways. Before Jack turns into a homicidal maniac, everyone is trying to evade insanity and doing mixed reception. They are staring into the abyss and what is horrifying is how well King writes the abyss looking back at them.
It is common knowledge that the author wrote it as a commentary on his own struggles with alcoholism, and it shines through in the characters. The sense of codependency, the slow descent into mania and anger with family members are all aspects that reflect his insanity. Because of that, Jack's turn to evil feels real. It's at times chilling because of how realistically it is. For a story centered on supernatural concepts, it's amazing how well he establishes every detail, allowing the lengthy page count to reflect his own inability to escape this madness. The road back to sanity is difficult and not exactly heartwarming. What it takes is something ugly and brutal, and King refuses to have any sympathy for Jack. He allows Danny to become more of that tragic figure, needing to decide if the affection he has for his father should overpower the self-destruction he experiences in those pages.
The book does differ greatly from the Stanley Kubrick-directed film, which the author took great offense to. It's easy to understand why, especially since Kubrick was more into the metaphysical, the visual horror that was more interpretive. King was more obsessed with something internal, more human and reflective in the minor ways that everyone disappoints each other. In place of Kubrick's coldness is King's need to throw in personality and depth of characters that challenge their own sanity. The descent makes more sense, the ending more vulgar and illuminating on the page. The Torrances feel more real in King's hands because the reader is allowed to know their secrets and get visions into their personal lives that a two hour movie possibly couldn't. Both have their value, but it's important to note that one by itself doesn't fully convey what makes "The Shining" a legacy-status book in King's bibliography.
Some may consider King to be a pulpy writer who relies on cheap thrills, but that's because they haven't read his best work, or at least taken consideration outside of mediocre film adaptations. What he does really well is explore why horror is a great genre for the human condition. It's a chance to take boring metaphors and give them greater weight, showing what the dependency on them ultimately does to the subconscious and bring forth a terror that is indicative of the individual. His characters feel more real, even in someplace as abstract as The Overlook Hotel. They have something relatable that is tough to fully ignore. Even if some of his work may be considered lesser, it's hard to fully think that way about something like this, which is so reliant more on characters than scares. It needs that investment for everything to work, and does so with an applaudable gravitas that he'll continue to reach and sometimes exceed for decades to come.
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