Stephen King's The Shining is one of the most iconic horror stories of all time. While the film directed by Stanley Kubrick in 1980 contributed to this icon status, the book has this status on its own. It is the book that convinced me of King’s legendary status as a horror writer. However, it goes beyond thrills and terror, discussing a complicated web of deep themes and exploring fascinating characters. The Shining is a horror masterpiece. It is the most chilling story I have consumed. It is also a literary masterpiece, fantastic even apart from the horror.

My Relationship with King

I’ve known of Stephen King’s superstar status since I started reading for fun. I was amazed that his books filled an entire shelf at Barnes & Noble. I read The Mist first when I was a freshman in high school. I didn’t like it. However, a few years later, I read King’s supposedly scariest novel, Pet Sematary, and I started to understand why he is so beloved. It was unsettling, creepy, and deeply thematic. However, the story is relatively narrow in scope. There is only one central theme and only one genuinely fleshed-out character. Also, looking back on it, I don’t feel it’s as profound an exploration of grief as people make it out to be. Grief is a sensitive subject, and I’m not trying to tell anyone how to do it. If you found the book relatable or insightful in that aspect, that’s great. Maybe I will understand it more after a reread. In my experience, that is one with lots of grief, it’s not a book I consider especially impactful in that respect. I’m not trying to spend this whole blog talking about Pet Sematary, but it’s important to understand my view of The Shining. While reading and after finishing The Shining, I was convinced of King as a writer. It’s not only the best King novel I’ve read, it’s one of the best novels I’ve ever read. Unfortunately, I doubt I’ll read a King novel I like more than this one, but that doesn’t mean I won’t read another I like.

So, let us discuss The Shining. I will break this review into two sections: spoiler-free and spoiler-filled. Of course, we will start with the spoiler-free section.

Spoiler-Free

The Shining, published in 1977, follows Danny Torrance, his father, Jack Torrance, and his mother, Wendy Torrance, as they live in a famous hotel with a dense history. Jack is working as the winter caretaker, his last chance to turn his life around. The hotel is mysterious, ominous, and eventually dangerous.

Overall, I loved this book and plan on reading it many more times. It felt like the perfect book for me, painfully perfect. I appreciate it from a technical standpoint and its ability to deeply connect with me emotionally. I rate The Shining by Stephen King a 10/10, making it a new favorite and a masterpiece.

King discusses heavy themes such as substance abuse, generational trauma, parenthood, fear, forced maturity, dysfunctional families, financial stress, anger, isolation, friendship, love, and grief. While it is often pitched as an exploration of isolation, it is truly so much more than that. It balances each thematic element, integrating them perfectly with the story and horror. They never feel forced. Instead, each theme is a potential observation, and I likely missed some. King can explore many themes because he deeply explores several characters from a nuanced view. Each primary character is a complicated collection of fears, desires, histories, and emotions. They are explored in such a raw, unfiltered way that alone feels unsettling. Each character, or at least each POV character, is one you can latch on to and relate to.

The Shining is horrific in many ways. The supernatural aspects feel daunting, sinister, and so frightening on a primal level. It’s everything I want from a ghost story. The novel is also psychologically horrific, as character question their own sanity and the sanity of each other. It explores very real psychological issues in a painfully undisguised and relatable way. King explores survival, natural forces, and the effects of violence. I credit King’s writing as a major reason the story and certain scenes feel so unsettling. I prefer books with descriptive writing that conjures tangible images in my head. Without that, I struggle to connect and feel the intended impact. King masterfully balances intricate, detailed writing with short, action-heavy writing. He builds tension beautifully and intentionally uses the pacing to build suspense. I adore the way the writing sometimes becomes deranged, sporadic, and mad. Even more so, I love the way King balances these moments with more grounded ones. He is reserved with his use of dramatic, choppy language, something I wish more authors would do. Less is more. Overall, I adore the writing. It is stunning, brilliant, and petrifying.

King crafts a narrative rich with questions and mysteries, all of which he answers at the perfect moment and in the perfect way. From the very beginning, there is this constant feeling of building toward something. There is constant progress, new developments, and new horrors. Every event is important, and nothing is intended as shock value alone, which makes it more shocking. King also nails the ending, which is apparently rare for him. I spent the last 20% of the book pacing around my room as I listened.

While I believe The Shining is a masterpiece, it isn’t perfect. My only criticisms are related to the portrayal of women and the one Black character. King falls into some unfortunate habits when describing women, as do many male authors. He likes to write about breasts. I’m unsure if it’s just what was expected then, but it’s there. Fortunately, a lot of it feels like an attempt at a realistic portrayal of certain characters' perspectives. I’m not saying describing or mentioning breasts is bad. They are just a body part. However, if the same treatment were given to a male-specific body part, it would feel weird, too. It feels like lazy writing. While King is not perfect in his portrayal of women, Wendy is an excellent character brimming with agency and depth. I don’t want to spend too much time talking about the potential issues with how King writes about Dick Hallorann, but I will note my thoughts briefly. From my perspective, the problems seem like honest reflections of the time rather than malintent. While there are some potential pitfalls, there are also many instances of breaking harmful stereotypes and tropes. Again, Hallorann isn’t portrayed perfectly from a modern view, but he is a fantastic character created with care and intention.

Lastly, I want to briefly review the audiobook narrator. I read The Shining for the first time as an audiobook, and I don’t regret it. I think more people should talk about narrators in reviews because they hold a lot of power to either elevate or bring down a book. I listened to the version narrated by Campbell Scott, who did a fantastic job. He built the perfect voice for each character, though never so dramatic that it felt corny. His performance was subtle but incredibly effective. His tone was perfect, never too dull or too dramatic. What made Scott’s performance so great was the slight increase in intensity during a few scenes and even rarer scenes where his performance became downright horrific and brutal in the best way possible. Scott elevated King’s writing without ever overshadowing it.

Spoiler-filled section

The following section will contain spoilers. I highly recommend you click away at this point if you have not read The Shining. You have been warned.

I can’t explain my true feelings for this novel without telling you pages of details about myself, but I think that alone paints a solid picture of how much it impacted me. I’ll give you some brief information, though. I spent half of my childhood in a dysfunctional home, which eventually grew violent. There was an alcoholic in the house who displayed clear signs of severe mental illness but was unable to get help. Fortunately, it was not either of my parents. However, my father was abused, both emotionally and physically. I became highly perceptive to the cues that a storm was brewing. I was the one consoling my dad during it. In the latter years, I would often come home to broken windows, doors, and furniture. One time, the TV was torn off the wall. Eventually, I stopped living there, but I still visited. My dad spent lots of time locked in his office, eventually having to replace the wooden door with a steel one, which itself had to be replaced. My dad ended up practically homeless, moving his motorhome from place to place as the police told him to. Not long after, he died in a motorcycle accident. If you’ve read The Shining, you know why it hit so deep. Danny’s “shine” felt tragically similar to my own attentiveness. Similar to Danny, I was often told I was mature for my age, that I understood things that many adults didn’t. The Shining did not really offer insight into these issues, not any that I did not already have. However, it did make me feel seen. So, incredibly, painfully seen.

King’s depiction of Jack’s addiction is incredibly realistic and relatable. It is realistic from the perspective of watching someone else go through an addiction and withdrawals after quitting. He paints the all too familiar picture of alcohol breaking a person down, bringing them to a lower and lower state. People addicted to alcohol often commit acts they would have never done before, such as hurting a loved one. In Jack’s case, that was breaking his son’s arm. King also accurately shows how alcoholics tend to originate from other alcoholics. Jack never wanted to turn into his father, and yet he did even before moving to the Overlook Hotel. He became bitter toward his wife and aggressive toward his child. A lot of Jack’s thoughts and weaknesses originate from what he witnessed as a child. Alcoholism is never a choice and is instead the result of trauma and upbringing. Jack’s addiction is also relatable to someone who is suffering from addiction in general. While I don’t drink alcohol, I do eat food. Like Jack, I turn to my addiction when I’m stressed and when I want to escape. My addiction to overeating has caused a lot of pain. It has affected my social life as well. I’ve developed both overeating and undereating disorders because of it. I developed NAFLD, which could potentially become a threat to my life if I don’t change.

I also find the depiction of Jack’s stress, obsession, and bitterness relatable. I often feared how much I related to Jack, knowing what he was supposed to do later. It’s similar to how I felt afraid relating to Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Stress is dangerous and sometimes causes undeserved bitterness toward family members. However, I think these weaknesses are very common and human. It’s not a choice, but it happens. Also, Jack’s obsession with the Overlook Hotel’s history is similar to my own spontaneous obsessions. While harmless at first, they can become dangerous and all-consuming. It’s a warning against this kind of behavior.

Another thing I want to discuss is how terrifying many of the scenes are. Although it takes a while for the true horror elements to make their first scare, the spooky aspect of the hotel is hinted at early on, both in Danny’s dream and as Jack learns about the hotel’s history. However, the truly chilling events happen later on. The many scenes with the hedge animals felt surreal and ominous. The subtly is what made it so scary; it was the fact that you weren’t sure if the characters were imagining it or not. It’s also the aspect of not directly seeing hedge animals move but knowing they are moving in that makes it so creepy. Another two scary scenes are the ones involving the dead lady in the bathtub. The first one with Danny is terrifying because it involves a direct attack with morbid descriptions. However, it’s the second one with Jack that really got me. The description of something plopping and running toward the door made my heart race. You knew something was there but questioned if it was all in Jack’s mind. It was an unseen horror. Finally, the scenes toward the end where Dick Halloran considers murdering Danny and Wendy when he holds the roque mallet feel incredibly intense, horrifying, and shocking. Of course, it’s horrible when Jack goes after his own family, but for some reason, seeing his slow descent makes it less shocking and intense. Dick, on the other hand, has been the voice of reason and a figure of security. To see that the dark force is so strong to influence him so quickly shows how powerful that force is, and that brief moment where you wonder if Dick would kill them is excruciating.

I want to end by talking about Hallorann’s last dialogue with Danny. He explains to Danny that the world is a difficult place. There is this interesting concept of neutralriy that Hallorann discusses. He claims that the world doesn’t hate people but doesn’t love them. Bad things happen to good people. However, in all the darkness, people still love each other. It is a powerful sentiment with important implications, but it was the next part that really got me. Halloran says, “You grieve for your daddy, and when you feel you have to cry over what happened to him, you go into a closet or under your covers and cry until it’s all out of you again. That’s what a good son has to do. But see that you get on. That’s your job in this hard world, to keep your love alive and see that you get on, no matter what. Pull your act together and just get on.” I broke down in tears after reading that. Maybe it feels like a simplistic thing to cry over, but seeing Danny’s journey from this point and his relationship with his father cut deep. I am still grieving over my own father. I likely will for the rest of my life, but these first few years have been difficult. This section of the dialogue felt targeted specifically at me. It is a reflection of how I see my own grief. There is something so cathartic about Hallorann telling me to cry over what happened and to push onward nonetheless. He’s not telling me to ignore my grief or to stop myself from crying. At the same time, he offers a path forward and a reason for that path. What better way can I honor my dead father than by continuing on? There is none.

 

Filled with terror, love, and a raw examination of human psychology, King crafts one of the greatest pieces of literature, a book I will read over and over. It deserves all the praise it gets and more.