The evil spirits that inhabited the Overlook Hotel would eventually drive Jack insane by way of drowning him in his alcoholism, past trauma, and fears of becoming as abusive as his father.
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.
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.
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.
John Daniel Edward "Jack" Torrance is the secondary antagonist of the 1980 psychological horror film The Shining and a minor character in its 2019 supernatural horror sequel Doctor Sleep, both based on the respective Stephen King's 1977 and 2013 novels of the same name.
The Shining (1980) - Here's Johnny! Scene (7/7) | Movieclips
Why did Jack lose his sanity in The Shining?
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.
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.
Jack's Death And The Escape Are Both Very Different
Jack is left in the snow and freezes to death, and it's implied that the Overlook Hotel continues with its cycle of murder by bringing in more reincarnations of past workers.
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...
It's made very clear from the beginning that he was a drunk and a violent husband and father. He seems to go to the closed down hotel in hopes to get sober, since there's no booze at the hotel when it's closed. However.. We also see how cold he treats his family during the ride up to the hotel.
We identified in previous chapters that Jack strangled Danny in the fatherly love scene and with these new details it would seem that he also sexually abused his son during this event.
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.
As such, Grady has always been the butler, just as Jack has always been the caretaker insofar as they were both imprisoned in the future by the hotel, and their spirits became anachronistically part of history.
In the novel, Jack gets redemption and burns the Overlook Hotel down; in the 1980 film, Jack doesn't get redemption, he simply freezes to death in the hedge maze while attempting to kill his son Danny, dying as a monster.
It's not until Grady, the ghost of the former caretaker who axed to death his family, slides open the bolt of the larder door, allowing Jack to escape, that you are left with no other explanation but the supernatural.
By 2011, Dan has become an alcoholic to suppress his abilities. After moving to a New Hampshire town, Dan recovers through Alcoholics Anonymous. Working as a hospice orderly, Dan uses his shining to comfort dying patients, earning the nickname "Doctor Sleep".
In the film, Jack Torrance vividly interacts with a bartender named Lloyd, who appears to serve him drinks, even though the hotel is otherwise empty. This hallucinatory experience is a clear indicator of his disturbed mental state.
But the most dominant symptoms were positive symptoms since he had experienced many hallucinations and delusions. There are several types of schizophrenia experienced by Jack Torrance, including schizophrenic simplex, schizophrenic hebephrenic, schizophrenic catatonic and schizophrenic paranoid.
Despite its widespread praise, King famously despised Kubrick's adaptation of his book, so much so that he called it “a maddening, perverse, and disappointing film,” likening it to “a great big beautiful Cadillac with no motor inside,” eventually remaking the adaptation himself into a teleplay to finally “correct” ...
Kubrick discussed the film at length, but never explained many of the mysteries of the film. His discussion of the final scene is, in many ways, dismissive. He basically describes how Jack Nicholson was airbrushed into an old photo from 1921, and that's it. He also says the image suggests the reincarnation of Jack.
