The Shining by Stephen King is a story about the Overlook Hotel . Due to its remoteness and being closed in winter, it requires a caretaker to carry out possible renovations and maintenance. However, this seemingly simple job is extremely dangerous both because of the terrifying history of the hotel and the long solitude. King, in addition to creating such a new subject, has given life to the Overlook Hotel as if it were a living being . The hotel makes great efforts to swallow and transform every living being into one of the spirits residing in it. Undoubtedly, the hotel with its deathly silence, which is sometimes broken by the wind and sometimes by the wailing of the spirits , is the most important character in King's book.
King has also well-personified the caretaker and his unlucky family. It is clear that Jack Torrance , unemployed and penniless, with a history of violence and alcoholism (although he has recently given it up), is the worst choice for this job. Torrance's mind, soul, and brain are the battleground of the struggle between good and evil or him and the hotel throughout the story. The portrayal of Torrance, his eternal passion for alcohol, and his eternal suspicion and worry, and his wife Wendy have created one of the most unforgettable characters in the story. Beside him, Wendy has a very important role in calming Jack's restless soul. She, who is familiar with Jack's sudden violence, must control his anger with strategy and skill. In the same way, Wendy must establish a balance between her love for her son and her husband, a task in which she fails, and Jack turns against his mother and son from the beginning of the story.
But Danny Halloran , or in other words, his shining power, is the most important character in this book. King has painted a very believable picture of Danny and his supernatural power for the reader. Danny has the power to see the future, read people's minds, and even see spirits. He can identify others like him who have this shining power and establish a mental connection with them. It is this power of his that determines the fate of the story.
However, despite the brilliance of Stephen King's book, it must be admitted that The Shining is in the shadow of Stanley Kubrick's film The Shining . This may be the misfortune of the great writer that Stanley Kubrick, another great, has changed his story so much and made a memorable film from it that it is often associated with Stanley Kubrick's The Shining rather than Stephen King's The Shining.
A brief comparison between the film and the book, this section may contain spoilers
It must be admitted that King's book is commercial, full of sparkle and electricity, and completely Hollywood . It is like a boiling cauldron of a hotel that it is clear from the beginning that it will explode. The transformation of the hotel into a physical person who is after Danny is a failed attempt to increase the reader's stress level. Or Jack Torrance's attempt at the last moment to get out of the hotel's body and return to the character of Jack Torrance seems to have completely borrowed the pattern of Father Karras being possessed by the devil in the film The Exorcist . The animals beside the hotel also have a colorful but drowned role in the book and may reduce the believability of the story. Jack Torrance in the book is a person who, despite his serious mistakes and the symbol of a failed human being, is always fighting with the hotel and its satanic forces. And Wendy is also a rational woman who almost has control over the situation. There is also nothing new in the book about the thousand horrors .
But the film, Kubrick , has deleted some parts of the book and added some parts with his genius, making the story scarier and the fear deeper. He has put aside the symbols of physical fear and tried more to inject the element of fear under the reader's skin. For example, Jack Torrance in the film, with the brilliant performance of Jack Nicholson , has a lot of restlessness from the very beginning. For example, he plays tennis alone in the empty hall with a lot of noise. Although the game is ostensibly solo, the return of the ball seems to be answered by the hotel!
Jack Torrance has the ability to turn into a part of the hotel from the very beginning, which is why it seems that he has always been in the hotel and has become a part of it. In contrast, the satanic force of Jack in the film, we see Wendy who seems to have nothing to do but scream, cry, and give scared looks. In fact, if the Overlook Hotel didn't have those satanic forces, Wendy alone would be enough to drive Jack Torrance crazy!
Kubrick has also removed the sound of the elevator and replaced it with the amazing scene of blood flowing from the elevator, a terrifying scene where blood has gushed out of the elevator, filled the room, and finally covered the camera . The director of the film also does not believe in cliché and Hollywood explosions. He has depicted the end of the film in a thousand horrors that is much scarier than the predictable explosion in the book. Kubrick has also taken the baseball bat from Jack Torrance and given him an ax instead. The result of Kubrick's genius is the shocking and terrifying scenes of a man with an ax chasing his son to give him a little warning.
Mr. King's book is less violent than the film. One of the reasons for this is the baseball bat . Jack Torrance's blow to Halloran in the book only causes him to be injured. But Kubrick has not shown mercy to the unlucky Danny Halloran . The scene of his murder with the ax is shocking and horrible.
Stanley Kubrick has deliberately kept Wendy away from the events of the hotel, and the result is the masterpiece scenes of her escape from the hotel. Unforgettable scenes like when Wendy's shadow with a knife in hand , she herself is like one of the satanic forces of the film. Only when she escapes does Wendy, with her low intelligence, understand that in the ballroom of the hotel, a party and ceremony of men has taken place. One of them, with a disheveled face, tells Wendy that the party is wonderful.
Some scenes of the film have been created by the genius mind of Kubrick and there is no trace of them in the book. One of the most shocking of them is the human scene in the animal costume (an animal between a pig and a mouse) that suddenly confronts Wendy out of nowhere while having sex with an old man.
(Unfortunately, no matter how hard I tried to add a picture of this scene, I couldn't!)
Film or book?
Both the film and the book, but I prefer to watch the film, which I may have seen more than 10 times, a few more times instead of reading Stephen King's The Shining again.
