“The Shining” review:  Exploring Jack and Danny’s relationship from the Book and movie

A comparative analysis of the Halloween must-read

By Wesley Detweiler

Stephen King published his third book, The Shining, almost 50 years ago. King is known for publishing exclusively horror novels and more than 60 of his works have received film adaptations. 

Similarly, The Shining has been adapted two separate times throughout its years and Kubrick’s film, The Shining (1980) is one of the most popular movies to come out of a King book. 

However, many of the people who watched the movie have not read the book, and there are vast differences between the two.

In the beginning of the book, Jack Torrance is shown to love and care for his family. The book details his relationship with his son Danny and how they often play outside together. Jack is presented as an actual father figure, which is not at all how his character is introduced in the film. 

In the film itself, Jack is ill-tempered. In a scene where the characters are driving to a hotel, Jack expresses great annoyance when Danny asks him how much further they’ll drive until they arrive at their destination. He then spins the conversation into talking about the Donner party, which isn’t a topic that a 5 year old boy should know about. From the beginning, the film leaves out all the details and character development that the book uses to show that Jack isn’t inherently evil.

In the middle of the book, Danny is experiencing terrible thoughts, which leads to the family believing that he is sick. Danny goes into room 217 (room 237 in the movie) and is strangled by a ghost that lives there. Wendy initially blames Jack because of a prior incident of abuse, but soon after they are both comforting Danny in the kitchen area. This scene shows that even as Jack is beginning to go insane, he still loves Danny. 

The movie throws this idea away and instead, once Jack is blamed for hurting Danny, it pushes him over the edge. This scene eventually leads to Jack’s famous bar/bathroom scene, where he walks in on an imaginative party at which he has a conversation with the ghost of the hotel’s past keeper, Mr. Grady, who convinces him that he should deal with the problems – in other words, kill Wendy and Danny. The movie skips entirely over the kitchen scene in the book.

In the book, Jack also agrees to have Danny be seen by a doctor because of his sickness, which doesn’t happen in the movie. Jack tries to set up the snowmobile but the hotel forces him to destroy it instead. In the movie he doesn’t ‘try’ at all to help Danny but instead unpromptedly destroys the snowmobile, trapping them in the hotel. 

Lastly, the movie and the book have different endings which both show Jack’s insanity. These endings share a different story in how they set up Jack’s character as a whole. 

In the book ending, Jack fights the hotel’s possession and tells Danny to run and escape just before the hotel takes back over and transforms his body into a monster. Throughout the book Jack is shown to still have his love for Danny, and King represents the unconditional love that a father can have for his children. 

In the movie ending, Jack eventually chases Danny through the maze, set on killing him before eventually freezing to death. It throws the aspect of Jack trying to be a father and his love for his family out the window in order to have a more suspenseful horror movie.