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)