While checking the boiler in the basement of the Overlook Hotel, Jack finds an old scrapbook, which serves within The Shining as a symbol of the hotel's rich and sordid history; however, the scrapbook also symbolizes the strange power the hotel has over Jack to influence his actions and drive him insane.
The family has to care for the hotel for the winter, but they cannot leave the mountainous area. In this isolation every day becomes the same for Jack as his writer's block becomes quotidian. The combination of isolation, monotony, creative frustration, and supernatural forces extract Jack's insanity.
This scene has been interpreted in many ways, and one of the most popular explanations is that it represents the hotel “absorbing” Jack's soul. Although this makes sense, Kubrick himself has said the photo actually suggests Jack being a reincarnation of an earlier official at the hotel.
This further confirms that the powers known as "the Shine" may well be hereditary, and Danny Torrance's most likely came from Jack, who appears to be particularly sensitive to the Overlook Hotel's mental probing.
Both in the book, and the film, Jack is “Possessed” by the evil spirit that resides in the Overlook Hotel. We are never given a specific name or background on the “Entity”, but the follow-up film to The Shining, Doctor Sleep, sheds more light on all the different spirits that haunt the Overlook.
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Why did Jack say "Here's Johnny"?
Moments later, he would improvise the “Here's Johnny!” line, which was a reference to the intro of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Interestingly, Kubrick originally shot the scene with a fake door, but Nicholson – who once trained as a fire marshal – chopped it down too quickly.
Soon, after a winter storm leaves the family snowbound, the supernatural forces inhabiting the hotel influence Jack's sanity, leaving his wife and son in grave danger.
Once you realize that Jack has been absolutely bonkers long before taking the job as the caretaker for an isolated hotel, everything the man does in the film starts to make more sense, and his end becomes an inevitability instead of a tragedy10. Jack's subtly crazy presence also serves to “other” him.
In the novel, Danny is the Overlook's primary victim, and Jack Torrance is simply used as a conduit to get to Danny. The hotel wants Danny dead so that it can absorb his “shining” ability to add to the Overlook's plethora of dark energies, so it possesses Jack in his vulnerable state to try to kill Danny.
The ending of The Shining, particularly the photo of Jack in the 1921 ballroom, suggests that Jack is a reincarnation of a former hotel employee, although this explanation is not explicitly stated in the film. The Shining explores themes of cyclical violence and abuse, and Kubrick's film is full...
The woman in King's novel is Lorraine Massey, who used to seduce bellboys and engage in sexual acts with them. Lorraine was the wife of a prominent New York lawyer, but during her stay at the Overlook, she was with a younger man.
What mental illness does Jack have in The Shining?
There are several types of schizophrenia experienced by Jack Torrance, including schizophrenic simplex, schizophrenic hebephrenic, schizophrenic catatonic and schizophrenic paranoid.
In the film, Danny walks backwards in his own footprints to mislead Jack, then jumps to a side path and slips out of the maze. Wendy and Danny escape the hotel in Hallorann's Snowcat, while Jack gets lost trying to pick up Danny's tracks, sits down to rest, and freezes to death.
Danny is then pursued by his father in the outdoor hedge maze, but manages to escape while Jack is lost wandering inside. Wendy and Danny escape in Dick's snowcat, while Jack freezes to death. The film's final shot zooms into an old picture hanging in the hotel's hallway, of guests attending a ball on July 4, 1921.
Jack has a bourbon on the rocks in his hand, and the waiter spills three flutes of advocaat on his clothes and into his drink, inadvertently creating a beverage that Jack doesn't even drink in the film.
In The Shining, room 217 is the room that is focused on as having a dark history and being a haunted room due to the tragedy of Mrs. Massey. Danny is warned not to enter this room and anyone who enters the room has bizarre encounters.
He points to the knitted Apollo 11 sweater that Danny wears and claims that "237" refers to the mean distance of the Earth to the Moon. He also refers to the fact that a carpet pattern resembles the Apollo launching pad as evidence that the film is an elaborate apology of sorts for Kubrick's involvement.
Room 237 contains the ghost of a dead woman, who emerges from the bathroom and tries to strangle Danny Torrance when he dares to enter. His father Jack later comes to investigate his claims of the mysterious woman in the room. In the book, he sees signs of her, but retreats before she can attack him.
This argument would also seem to support Grady's claim to Jack that he has "always" been the caretaker; if Jack is the reincarnation of the caretaker from the 1920s, it would suggest that the hotel continuously "reanimates" its 1921 guests, bringing them back in different guises; hence, just as Delbert was brought back ...
After a corpse tries to strangle Danny in the infamous room 217 and Wendy and Jack see the resulting bruise on their son's neck, Wendy accuses Jack of abusing Danny.
The supernatural elements in The Shining are inspired by a real haunting in Colorado, adding a sense of authenticity to the story. The Overlook Hotel in The Shining was inspired by the Stanley Hotel in Colorado, which has a haunted history and provided Stephen King with inspiration for the novel.
