Hallucinations

Jack had been shingling the roof when he is stung by a wasp. He tries to go down the ladder, but there is a nest full of wasps blocking his way. Jack gets another flashback, this one has to do with him loosing his previous job. He remembers George Hatfield, a student of his that had joined the debate team. The first few weeks George had had been a good contributor to the group with his strong arguments about controversial issues. But when he spoke, he could not pronounce one word without stuttering. Jack had to cut him from the team, and when he did, George took revenge. He had sawed his car’s tires. Jack had lost his temper and had almost beaten George to death. He had been fired the very same day. He thought his temper was just as uncontrollable as his drinking problem. Back to reality again. He went down the ladder to get the bug bomb.

That same afternoon Wendy and Danny had arrived from a nearby town where they had been purchasing some milk. Jack had hugged both Danny and Wendy with joy. Jack had kept the wasp’s nest for Danny has a present. Danny had been delighted and put it in his bedroom. Later, at night, Danny had been focusing on his reading. Jack says it’s bedtime and Danny should brush his teeth and out on his pajamas. Danny does so obediently and locks the bathroom door. He spends there some minutes and when Jack calls upon him but there is no answer. Jack threatens to punish him if he does not open the door. Silence. Jack breaks the doors lock with his foot, and there is Danny, sitting in the edge of the tub as if hypnotized. “Danny!” He does not answer. Instead another voice came out oh his mouth, deep and troubling. “Roque, stroke, the roque mallet… has two sides… roque, stroke, REDRUM!” Danny suddenly became himself, confused. He could not remember what had happened. Something to do with Tony coming and showing him a roque mallet. Everybody was confused. Jack and Wendy where frightened. Jack gave Danny a glass of water and put him to sleep. Midnight came, and a sharp shriek along with it. Jack and Wendy woke up alarmed, only to find Danny twisting on the floor with wasp all over him. Jack carried him to their room where he put some ice on his hand. Danny calms down a bit but is still in a lot of pain. Jack goes down stair angrily thinking that the bug bomb must have been defective, he gets a glass bowl which he uses to cover up the nest. He then slides a book under it and carries it to the front porch. He looks through the glass but he can barley see the nest because there are tons of wasps, at least a hundred. The wasps would not survive in the freezing temperature, Jack carefully places the glass bowl onto the  stairs of the front porch. He then goes back to his room to check on Danny and Wendy.

A couple of months later, Jack finds something strange in the cellar while checking on the boiler. An old scrapbook that contains all of the Overlook’s history. Jack is shocked by what he reads in that scrapbook. The Hotel had been through quite a mysterious history, since its owner was said to be the head of the mafia. For over twenty years, the Overlook was a refugee for mafia members. But in 1967 a drug-lord was killed in the Presidential Suite. There was a picture in the scrap book, a wall splattered with blood and some white stuff. Jack hears foot steps behind him and realizes Wendy had been watching him. She’d been worried now, mainly because Jack’s drinking symptoms had returned; chewing aspirin, whipping his lips or getting constant migraines. Wendy convinces him to go up stairs and rest a little bit.

The next day, Wendy and Danny went to the nearby town’s library, leaving Jack alone to do his duties. Jack would trim the front lawn’s hedges. Each edge was shaped as a different animal. There was a bunny, a dog, and two lions. As Jack trimmed the hedges, he got distracted by some weird noises over in the playground. He went over there to see what it was. When he was near to the swings he looked back. The lion shaped hedge had moved, it was in a striking position. Jack froze. Now the dog was in a running position, towards him. Jack closed his eyes and screamed. This could not be true, he thought. When he opened his eyes every thing was back in its place. Jack just had a hallucination. He decided to keep quite and not tell this to Danny or Wendy.

Snow was falling now, and Jack was asleep taking a nap upstairs. Wendy was knitting next to the fireplace down at the lobby. Danny was in front of room 217, staring at it, with the key in his hand which he had stolen from Daddy’s office. There was this certain force that made him unlock the door and open it. The room was cold. Danny turned to the bathroom. The bath tub had its curtains closed. When he slid the curtains open, Danny wet his pants with fear. A dead woman lied on the tub. Danny tried to run but the door was locked. He remembered what Hallorann had told him about some things not being real. Danny closed his eyes and relaxed. And when he opened them, the dead woman was still there, choking Danny.

“The lion on the left had advanced all the way to the fence now; its muzzle was touching the boards. It seemed to be grinning at him. Jack backed up another two steps. His head was thudding crazily and he could feel the dry rasp of his
breath in his throat” (307).

            I am a bit confused here, hadn’t Mr. Hallorann told Danny that only people what had “the shine” could see stuff that wasn’t really true in the hotel. Is Jack just having a hallucination because he was tired, or is this part of something bigger? Maybe Jack has schizophrenia, or maybe he shines as well.

“And then the voice of Dick Hallorann came to him, so sudden and unexpected, so calm, that his locked vocal cords opened and he began to cry weakly not with fear but with blessed relief. (I don't think they can hurt you ... they're like pictures in a book ... close your eyes and they'll be gone.)  His eyelids snapped down. His hands curled into balls. His shoulders hunched with the effort of his concentration: (Nothing there nothing there not there at all NOTHING THERE ,THERE IS NOTHING!) Time passed. And he was just beginning to relax, just beginning to realize the door must be unlocked and he could go, when the years-damp, bloated, fish-smelling hands closed softly around his throat and he was turned implacably around to stare into that dead and purple face.” (321)

            How is this possible? When Halloran said he had seen something horrible in this room, had he seen the same dead woman that choked Danny? Is this one of the ghosts that Ullman had mentioned? Is this real or just a hallucination? Will this “ghost” strangle Danny to death? Maybe Danny is just having one of those nightmares that he sometimes has. Maybe Tony is showing him the future.

Danny had always been right, Tony had told him the truth. They where doomed in the Overlook. This Hotel did not welcome any visitor. Hallucinations haunted Danny and Jack. But these hallucinations where some what real, they could hurt you, just like that dead woman had strangled Danny. Who knows maybe they would all be murdered by ghosts. REDRUM. MURDER.