The Shining

A detailed Summary of The Shining

The Shining is about a white middle class dysfunctional family that suffers from natural and supernatural stresses in an isolated Rocky mountain hotel. .The father, a former teacher turned writer, is portrayed as a habitual drinker, wife- and child-abuser, with a kind of evil streak The mother is shown as a battered woman. The film suggests that due to the abuse at the hands of his father and the passivity of his mother, the child of this family developed psychological problems. He had imaginary friends and began to see frightening images.

Early in the film , a psychologist is called in to treat the troubled child :and she calmed the mother with a statement to the effect that, " These things come and go but they are unexplainable". This juncture of the film is a starting point for one of the central themes of the film which is : how a fragile family unit is besieged by unusual forces both natural and supernatural which breaks and possesses and unites with the morally challenged father while the mother and the child through their innocence, love, and honesty triumph over these forces.

One motif which reappears in the film is the power of nature, especially in relation to the individual. In f

Another way the weakness of the individual is shown in The Shining is through the contrast between the family and the large hotel. Through out the film , the hotel seems just so large that even if it wasn't haunted we could easily understand why one would not be comfortable in it. All the rooms seem so spacious and we know that it was not built for a small family but for hundreds of people. For example, we see the boy riding his bike through the huge hallways of the hotel which almost seem never ending. The mazes outside of the hotel also convey the sense of human impotence in the face of more powerful structures. Also in the scene where Johnny throws the ball at the walls of his large study room we get the feeling that he is trying angrily and bitterly to master the hotel, an attempt which ultimately fails.

Screenplay by: Stanley Kubrick; Dianne Johnson

The weakness of the individual is another motif in the film. Perhaps we see this most clearly with the boy who is sensitive to and harassed by the supernatural forces in the hotel. As we know from everyday experience children seem weak because they are small and usually are very sensitive and easily hurt by the negative and destructive outbursts of adults. Our general sense of a child's vulnerability is heightened by the way the child of The Shining is forced to grapple with such evil and terrible forces which are likely to be difficult for all of us.

Some common words found in the essay are:
Rocky Mountains, Shining Shining, Johnson Based, stanley kubrick, Stanley Kubrick, mother child, weakness individual, natural supernatural, unable manage, Joe Turkle,

Approximate Word count = 979
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Arts