After reading an article about the design of Room 217/237 in the Kubrick film, I noted an explanation of the woman in the bathtub, Lorraine Massey, as being someone who lusted after bellboys and killed herself out of disgusted shame by wrist-slitting.
Ullman offered to call the police, but Mrs. Massey refused and proceeded to drink all day in the Colorado Lounge. Later, she commits suicide in the bathroom of 217. Her ghost which haunts the room can appear like a zombie and is capable of affecting the physical world.
What is the significance of room 217 in The Shining?
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 instead encountered Lorraine as a young naked woman in the bathroom, having a bath who comes out and kisses him. During that kiss, she then morphed into a rather ugly, rotting old woman who chased Jack out, cackling at his infidelity.
THE SHINING - Between Room 217 and Room 237 (analysis)
Why did the husband go insane in The Shining?
Jack takes his wife, Wendy (Shelley Duvall), and their son, Danny (Danny Lloyd), with him, but little do they know, the Overlook has some dark secrets of its own. Triggered by Danny's psychic abilities, the hotel releases some dangerous supernatural forces that break Jack's sanity — and the safety of Wendy and Danny.
Jack becomes obsessed enough with the hotel's sordid past that he wants to write a book about it. He makes a long-distance call to the hotel's manager, Stuart Ullmann, and antagonizes him with this knowledge. Eventually, he goes mad thanks to the influence of the hotel's ghosts and attempts to kill Wendy and Danny.
Delbert Grady, better known as the Hotel Caretaker, is the overarching antagonist of Stephen King's 1977 novel The Shining, as well as its 1980 film adaptation and its 1997 miniseries adaptation. He was once a caretaker of the Overlook Hotel who went insane, murdered his family and committed suicide.
Kubrick agreed to change the infamous room number from 217 to 237 (which does not exist) in the movie because the hotel was worried people would not want to stay in the room in the future. Ironically, room 217 is most often requested at Timberline Lodge, according to the hotel's website.
The most famous of all haunted Stanley rooms is 217, which was the inspiration behind Stephen King's The Shining. King and his wife stayed in room 217 in the early 70's; they were the only guests in the hotel.
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.
Massey refused and proceeded to drink all day in the Colorado Lounge. She swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills in the bathtub of room 217 that same night, killing herself. Several characters in The Shining have experiences with the ghost of Mrs. Massey in room 217, including Delores Vickery, Hallorann, Danny, and Jack.
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.
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.
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.
As with most Stephen King tales though, Jack meets his end freezing to death in the hotel's maze as Wendy and Danny manage to escape in a snowcat. Realising he's lost on his quest for blood, Jack slumps to the ground and accepts his fate.
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.
The camera quickly cuts to the next scene. It is morning, and Jack is dead, frozen in the maze, trapped in the Overlook Hotel forever. The final shot of The Shining is the real kicker as the camera zooms in on a photo hanging in the Overlook Hotel.
In the book, the man dressed in a suit is actually Horace Derwent, the mysterious owner of the Overlook Hotel, and the man in the costume (which is a dog in the book) is Roger, a one-time lover of his. The novel provides Roger and Horace's story as an example of atrocities that have happened in the hotel.
At the hotel, Jack begins to display the telltale signs of drinking that Wendy has come to know so well. He constantly wipes his mouth with a napkin and chews Excedrin one after another.
