Alcoholism kills, literally.
Stanley Kubrick’s cabin-fever-hyperbole The Shining portrays alcoholism’s devastating effects on the human psyche. Jack Torrance, a writer and recovering alcoholic, much like Steven King whilst writing this novel, takes up a job acting as caretaker of The Overlook Hotel during the winter months. During his interview, Jack learns of a prior family homicide caused by “too much cheap whiskey,” to which he responds, “You can rest assured that that’s not gonna happen with me.”
Jack, his wife Wendy, and their son Danny move to The Overlook in an attempt to patch up a marriage wounded by Jack’s alcoholism, unaware of the unsettling events in store.
The terror starts before Jack picks up a bottle. The audience meets Tony, “the little boy who lives in Danny’s mouth”—the personification of Danny’s “shining.”
Stemming from a shoulder dislocation after his drunk father angrily lifted him up off the floor, Danny’s shining is a product of alcohol abuse. Granting its user telepathy, as well as the ability to see events in both the future and the past “like a picture book,” Danny’s shining awakens The Overlook Hotel’s dormant evils. The hotel is attracted to Danny like Jack is to whisky after one year of sobriety, and it first starts to toy with Danny while he throws darts in the game room. He meets two sinister playmates in matching blue dresses, white ribbon bows around their waists, pale skin, and quaint eyes. This evil is alcohol, taking its first sip on his shine.
Like alcohol, the Overlook Hotel offers a nice escape from the reality of Jack Torrance’s failing marriage and career as a writer. In their first month at the hotel, the Torrance family seem to be enjoying themselves. Wendy and Danny explore the hedge maze, but Jack, having chosen to stay inside, eerily stands over them as he examines the scale replica of the hedge maze. Here, Jack admires his homey, haunted hospice, a cunning grin creased across his lips. As he stalks his family from above, he is in turn preyed upon by the hotel. The longer Jack stays at the Overlook, the worse his addiction symptoms become. Jack falls victim to addiction and becomes a volatile recluse, snapping at Wendy after she “distracts him” by walking over to comfort him at his typewriter. In the movie’s most unsettling scene, Jack gives an emotionally contorted “I love you talk” to Danny, confessing his love for the hotel and their family’s role in this eerie “situation.” This is not Jack, but the Hotel—his addiction—talking through him.
Jack is possessed by an evil that lives inside him and speaks to his son. All it wants is for Jack to feed it, but the food it craves poisons Jack and his family.
Its effects are not bad at first, causing a state of euphoria when enjoyed in moderation as seen in a family snowball fight. But the hunger grows. It consumes Jack, telling him to neglect his family, health, and well being. The things he loved are no longer as important as The Overlook.
The malicious power takes complete control of Jack’s mind, no matter how hard he tries to fight it.
Using him as a conduit for evil, The Overlook channels into Jack its corrosive, addictive force. Each spirit he indulges in from Lloyd’s bar in the gold room brings him one sip closer to insanity. Later, Jack gets up from the bar in a liquid grace. Former homicidal caretaker Delbert Grady accidentally spills his drinks on Jack, whom he ushers to a now-iconic red and white bathroom to clean him off. After Jack pesters Grady about his previous role as caretaker and triple homicide, Grady cross-examines Jack, interrogating, “But you are the caretaker. You’ve always been the caretaker.”
In Jack’s inescapable function, Grady essentially tells Jack “Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic.” It is Jack’s duty to care for the hotel, and he devotes himself to his addiction. To protect the hotel—his addiction, alcohol in this case—and its “situation” as Grady puts it, Jack learns from Grady that his wife and son need to be “corrected,” by any means necessary. In this scene, alcohol takes full control of his mind. In subsequent scenes, it takes over his body and willpower as he terrorizes his wife and child through the hotel in a murderous pursuit. Jack does not overcome his addiction. Instead, the hotel absorbs Jack—he is the caretaker after all. He always has been, and always will be.
Stanley Kubrick’s psychologically twisting film conveys the power of alcohol over human will and the horror that it creates, eventually determining that we are not stronger than our addiction. Jack dies an alcoholic, while his wife and child flee The Overlook, escaping addiction.
The movie’s stunning visuals and beautifully jarring scenes elicit creeping fear in its audience. The sonic mickey mousing—a film technique that syncs the accompanying music with the actions on screen—employed by Kubrick’s music editor Gordon Stainforth, heightens the tension of every scene, becoming more prevalent the more Jack drinks, diverging to insanity.
Sanity is like a shot of whiskey, the second it’s filled, it’s gone. The madness that unfolds at the end of the movie is a product of addiction, one its audience can avoid so long as they drink responsibly… and don’t axe murder their family.
