The Shinning

Title: The Shining

Author: Stephen King

Genre: Horror

Theme: Man Vs. The Overlook Hotel

Setting: The Overlook Hotel, in a remote location on a mountain in Colorado.

Major characters:

Danny Torrance is a five year old boy who has the gift of shinning.

Wendy Torrance is Danny's mother who is the strongest character, mentally, in this book.

Jack Torrance is Danny's father who becomes insane toward the end of the story.

Minor characters:

Delbert Grady was the former caretaker that killed his family.

Dick Hallorann is gifted with the shinning. He also saved Wendy and Danny's life.

Lloyd is Jack's shinning friend who is the bartender.

Tony is Danny's shinning friend that shows him things about the hotel.

Plot summary:

Jack Torrance wanted to work on his writing so he accepted the job of watching over the Overlook Hotel for the winter. He thought that peace and quiet would be just the perfect thing, but it did not turn out that way. Jack and Wendy fell in love with the hotel at first sight but Danny did not like it at all. Tony, his shinning friend, had shown him many bad things in the hotel.

For a while, all is well at The Overlook. Jack's play is coming along nicely for the first time in ages, and the family is coming back to each other after a lot of heartache. However, The Overlook starts having an effect on Jack. He becomes more and more fascinated in its dark history, and goes back to one of his old habits from his drinking days, not actually drinking itself, but chewing Excedrin dry for the headaches that he begins to get regularly.

A number of strange incidents occur throughout the story. Jack finds a wasps' nest while maintaining the roof, uses an appropriate wasp bomb on it, and puts it in Danny's room. That night, although Jack had checked there were no wasps still in the nest, Danny is stung several times, and when Jack manages to put a bowl over the nest, there are many wasps trapped inside. Then in an almost hypnotic fit after spending too much time going through the hotel's papers in the boiler room, Jack smashes the radio, effectively cutting them off from the rest of the world as snow has fallen heavily, and reaching the nearest town has become impossible except by snowmobile.

In one part of the book Danny comes downstairs with bruises on his neck after venturing into room 217. Wendy initially suspects Jack of doing it, especially when Jack reports nothing amiss in the room but eventually accepts that it wasn't him, and just wants to get Danny out of the hotel. Fortunately, the