The Bad Moon Rising

While Danny was being choked by a “ghost” in room 217, Jack had been taking a nap. But he’d had a nightmare about his father. He was remembering how his father had come drunk home and beat his mother with his walking cane. Her mother had almost died because her skull was fractured. In his dream Jack heard a voice of his father, calling. 

“Kill him. You have to kill him, Jacky, and her, too. Because a real artist must suffer. Because each man kills the thing he loves. Because they'll always conspiring against you, trying to hold you back and drag you down”(335). 

Jack opened his eyes, sweating. The CB radio, was smashed up under his feet. This was their only connection to the outside world. Jack walks up the stairs, worried when he spots Danny sitting in the top of the stairs. He’s paralyzed with fear. There are finger marks around his neck. Jack screams for Wendy. When Wendy sees Danny she jumps to conclusions, and accuses Jack of hurting Danny. Jack is shocked, he tries to explain things to Wendy but she rushes down stairs. Jack follows her down to the lobby where she is talking to Danny. Danny screams, “it was her!” Danny tells his parents that he entered room 217 and that a dead women came out of the tub and started to choke him, but he managed to open the door and run. Jack thinks this is ridiculous, so he decides to take a look for himself. When Jack enters the room everything seems perfectly. When he opens the bathroom curtain, he sees nothing. When he locks the door behind him, he hears foot steps rush towards the door. The door nob starts to jingle, as if someone tried to open the door from inside. Jack runs down to the lobby, frightened. But he says that there is nothing up there in the room and that they should not worry about it.                                                                                                   

That same night Jack and Wendy discuss what had happened earlier that day. Wendy is very worried and she says that they should try to get out of this Hotel as soon as they can. Jack agrees and says that tomorrow he would try to start the snowmobile.                                                                                                                    Jack is now standing in front of the bathtub of room 217. There’s is a dead man on the tub. Its George Hatfield, the kid he’d beaten up at his last job. But suddenly he wasn’t dead anymore, he stood up and started to choke Jack. Suddenly Jack had his father’s cane in his hand. He began to beat George with it. While Jack beat him he realized it was no longer George, it was Danny, and he no longer had a cane, he had a mallet. Jack woke up alarmed, sweating. He had been dreaming again.     

During the afternoon, Jack went down to the storage room to look for the snowmobile. When he found it he realized that it would not start because it had no battery. He looked around for it, and hated himself when he found it. He did not want to leave. The Overlook was supposed to be a bonding experience fro his family and a way to escape his drinking problems since there was no alcohol at the Hotel. Jack pretended he did not see it and walked out of the storage room.                    

The turkey had been delicious. Wendy had cooked it to perfection. It was three days later that Danny went outside to the playground. The snow had covered everything by five feet. Danny noticed a little opening in the snow, as if was a small cave. Danny crawled inside and he saw how deep it was. The snow that supported the roof collapsed, leaving Danny trapped, It was then when it hit him, he was not alone in there was someone…something in there with him. Danny desperately tried to make a opening above him using his foot. When he succeeded and climbed out, he saw a hand inside there. Danny was terrified and ran. But the hedges where in his way, just the way they’d been with Jack. The lions  began to chase him to the front porch. When he was about to step inside, he felt a cut in his left thy. It was then that Jack and Wendy grabbed Danny. Danny began to cry and explained everything to them. Jack was furious. He yelled at Danny, telling him that they where just hedges and that could have not happened. Danny cried the rest of the afternoon when he felt Tony calling. “Daneeeeeee…” (448). Danny begins to dream, he is running from someone in the halls of the hotel. He is being chased by someone with a mallet that is smashing it against the walls. Danny remembers what the cook, Hallorann told him, if he is in danger, he should give him call through his mind. Danny does so, just as he recognizes the roaring drunken voice of his father being him. “Come on you godamm pup, take your medicine!”(451). Danny now falls into darkness, everything disappears. He now only sees two words flashing in red. REDRUM. MURDER.

 

"Now. Now by Christ. I guess you'll take your medicine now. Goddam puppy. Whelp. Come on and take your medicine." The cane had gone up and down on her seven more times before Brett and Mike got hold of him, dragged him away, wrestled the cane out of his hand” (330).

            Now we know from where Jack got his tendency to physically abuse his son Danny. He had broken his arm once, and slapped him twice now. I pity Jack, he had to put up with these horrible beatings that his father gave. Just imagine that your father would hit your mother with a cane until her skull was fractured. Poor Jack, he too got beat when his father came home drunk. Will Jack ever dare to do something similar to Wendy or Danny?

“I had agreed to take her and Danny away from the big bad boogeyman and there were no problems. So you see, I thought the best thing to do would be to…kill her.
” (392)

        What?!? Why would Jack think of something so horrible? Is Jack actually thinking about what his father told him? Is he capable of killing his own family? Maybe Jack is a actually insane. He already has had hallucinations, he has weird dreams in which his father talks to him and he is thinking about murdering his wife. Jack is probably suffering from schizophrenia. Maybe he will kill Wendy or Danny.

                                                                                                                                                Something really sinister is about to happen. Jack is involved in some plot to kill or hurt Danny and Wendy. The Overlook is about to take over Jack and use him as a pupet. “I see the bad moon arising. I see trouble on the way. I see earthquakes and lightnin'. I see those bad times today. Don't go around tonight, Well it's bound to take your life, There's a bad moon on the rise.” (302)