The Shining and Child Abuse

      Well, in honor of child abuse month, I'll talk a little about the significance of child abuse in The Shining. It seems odd that child abuse would be one of the main themes of a supernatural horror novel, but a look into Jack's background of violence can help to explain many aspects of the plot.

      For starters, Jack's father was an abusive drunk. He would come home from his job and abuse the children and his wife, even once going as far as putting his wife in the hospital. Young Jack, despite often being slapped around, still has a strange admiration of his father. This feeling of fear intertwined with love is an emotion that becomes a large part of Danny's life as his father gradually loses his grasp on reality while living at the Overlook.

      Because of his harmful relationship with his father, Jack as an adult shows a lot of the same traits as his father. He is predispositioned to be drunk and violent. However, he is a better man that his father, so he feels extreme remorse when he breaks Danny's arm in a drunken rage. Later, he vows to sober up in order to keep control: for the good of his family.

Jack and Danny share a tender moment

     Once moved into the Overlook things start to change for the worse. The hotel senses his weakness and plays on his cravings as a recovering alcoholic. Jack begins to show some old tendencies from his drinking days such as repeatedly wiping his mouth. He struggles because of his love for his family, but eventually the hotel has distorted his reality enough that it is able to get him to drink, thus sealing his fate as the hotel's servant. At this point, Jack can no longer resist his urges, and he takes up the Overlook's mission: to kill his family. By now, Jack has made the transformation from man to monster. This is where the child abuse theme comes back into play, as Jack is feverishly hunting Danny. Near the climax of the book, however, we see Danny stand up to his father without fear. To paraphrase, he explains to the monster that it is not his father and that if there is any of his father left, he knows that the hotel lies and cheats. This brings out one last shred of humanity from his father, in which he tells Danny how much he loves him for one last time.

     The point is that Danny was able to overcome the hotel's evil by breaking the cycle of abuse that had started with Jack's father. Because he stands up to his father, and with love, his father is able to overcome his demons for long enough to ensure his son's survival. In this sense, domestic violence can be viewed as one of the central conflicts and themes of The Shining.