The Shining

Article written by Emma Baldwin

B.A. in English, B.F.A. in Fine Art, and B.A. in Art Histories from East Carolina University.

The novel is fueled by King’s skill for creating realistic and believable supernatural events and unknown haunting entities. Such forces fill the Overlook Hotel and drive Jack Torrance to violence and insanity. Despite his desire to be a good husband and maintain sobriety, the hotel has different plans.

Key Facts about The Shining 

• Title: The Shining 
• When Written: 1976
• Published: 1977
• Literary Period: Contemporary
• Genre: Gothic / Horror / Psychological
• Point-of-View: Third-person omniscient
• Setting: Overlook Hotel in the Colorado Rockies
• Climax: When the boulder explodes in the Overlook Hotel killing Jack and destroying the hotel.
• Antagonist: Jack Torrance and the evil entities in the hotel.
• Point of View: Third person

Stephen King and The Shining

‘The Shining’ was Stephen King’s third novel and first hardback bestseller. It helped establish the author as one of the most important contemporary fiction writers in America.

Before writing the novel, Stephen King visited the famous Stanley Hotel in Colorado, taking a great deal of inspiration from the hotel’s purported ghostly history. He visited the hotel in 1974, wrote the book two years later, and published it in 1977.

Famously, Stephen King’s ‘The Shining’, and specifically the character of Jack Torrance, was inspired by King’s history with alcoholism. Stephen King has been sober since the late 1980s after his family staged an intervention for him. He attributes his experience with Alcoholics Anonymous as the primary reason he was able to succeed in his sobriety.

When speaking about his own history with alcohol, and if he too experienced a rock bottom moment as Jack Torrance did, he says he does not “have anything as traumatic.” The thing he remembers most he says is:

 being at one of my son’s Little League games with a can of beer in a paper bag, and the coach coming over to me and saying, ‘If that’s an alcoholic beverage, you’re going to have to leave.’ That was where I said to myself, ‘That’s something I’ll never be able to tell anybody else. I’ll keep that one to myself.’ I drew on that memory.”

Books Related to The Shining

Stephen King returned the famous characters in ‘The Shining’ in his 2013 novel ‘Doctor Sleep’. Danny, once five-years-old, is now a grown man struggling with alcoholism himself. This more recent novel won the 2013 Bram Stocker Award for Best Novel and was adapted into a film, as ‘The Shining’ was.

Other related novels include Stephen King’s own ‘Misery’, ‘The Outsider’, 11/22/63, and ‘Mr. Mercedes’. These haunting horror stories take very realistic plotlines and merge them with darkness and supernatural elements.

Edgar Allan Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher” is another story that readers of ‘The Shining’ may find themselves drawn to. It follows the story of twins set in a dark, haunted house. ‘Haunting of Hill House’ by Shirley Jackson has been cited by King himself as an influence. He also named ‘Something Wicked This Way Comes’ by Ray Bradbury as an inspiration for the novel.

The Lasting Impact of The Shining