Stephen King's 'The Shining' - Final Review

Warning: Spoilers Ahead

Alright, I’m going to be honest. This book wasn’t really as amazing as everyone was making it out to be. The plot was great, but I think could have been expressed MUCH better than the way this book did. I’m going to be honest, I don’t have a weak stomach. So describing to me the disturbing murder or assault of a random character won’t bother me. It simply won’t especially in a book. In a movie, maybe I’ll be a little grossed out like “Why is their leg turned like that? What’s wrong with their ribs?” but I don’t think I’d actually care. Authors who want to impress all readers, gore loving or sensitive, need to add in something extra.

 I feel like this related more to Friday the 13^th, with a lot more plot development and back stories. However, every horrible thing that happened didn’t really matter. You couldn’t relate to these characters, you couldn’t enjoy them for their witty attitude or they’re true kindness. I may have ranted about this a bit more in my prior post, but you need to give me characters that I love. The closest character that I came to enjoying the presence of was Dick Halloran, but even so, I wasn’t broken apart when Jack attacked him, or when he was almost taken over by the hotel towards the end. I was given characters that I could pity, not characters I felt sorry for. I was given characters that I could recognize the difference in their absence, not characters whose absence I could mourn. It may just be me, but if you want to make a horror book that will scare me, you need to write a book that will not only torture me with the contents, but with what happens to my characters. And another question is, why in the world would you kill off the one person that everyone’s supposed to hate? You’re supposed to kill off a couple people the readers will like, make them wrench their heart out almost. But no, the one person you kill in the whole story is the drunk/villain hotel thing. Okay cool, everyone lived happy ever after. Okay maybe Danny’s a little sad and Wendy’s a little old and Mr. Hallorann’s just out being Mr. Hallorann but it’s nothing to leave me in horror. “Oh noo, what happened was screwed up!” To me it’s just: “Oh, his dad was taken over by a hotel and blew himself up. Sucks.” I don’t really care. I was told of Danny and his father’s strong connection, but I didn’t see it. What I SAW was Jack breaking his two year old son’s arm, or screaming at him for stuttering, and being an obnoxiously irresponsible father. Why Danny would love him, I don’t understand. I know how abusive relationships work and all. It usually starts off sweet and gradually gets worse and worse. But two years in and you break your kids arm, I’m pretty sure that kid would have some kind of fear factor for you or some bitterness towards you. Maybe that’s just me. Maybe I’m just less forgiving, but that would be me in his case scenario. Jack was the villain, that’s all he was. A sob story, an occasional instance where he would say he loved his wife but plot to kill her in the middle of it, and then a murderous rampage. Why would I like him? Danny is a smart, yet typical 5-year-old boy. Practically perfect. I’d call him a Gary-sue but I won’t, because he’s a five year old character and I’ll give him some slack. Wendy just bothers me. I can’t point out why, but she just does. I don’t see her characteristics as a mother besides her actions. We aren’t introduced enough to her thoughts on her love of Danny, her love of her husband. In fact besides the singular phrase ‘Wendy loved Danny/Jack’, we don’t get details about it. We don’t hear her explaining why, or anything. Stephen King is capable of making such good characters, and he probably has, but the way he’s put them out there is poorly done.

There are occasions where the scare factors just make me want to die laughing, too. There are points in this story where I would wonder what this story is even about. Voices from masquerades, moving hedge animals, sassy demons that possess the residents’ head. There has to be my favorite, though. At the first sentence I kind of got creeped out, humans on all fours can make you prepare for the worst because you think of exorcist type of stuff. Instead, this is what I got: “There was a man on all fours halfway down the corridor, between him in the stairs… The man looked up at him. His eyes were tiny and red. He was dressed in some sort of silvery, spangled costumes. A dog costume, Danny realized” (King 335). There was more time spent describing the dog costume than anything. Nothing threatening in his appearance, nothing that will haunt me in my nightmares. It was a freaking man in a dog costume. It’s safe to say that I was laughing pretty hard at this point. What are you trying to do, Mr. King? Is this supposed to be startling? Disturbing? Despite the man’s apparent insanity and his threat to eat Danny’s private parts, there was nothing that was actually threatening about this dog-man-thing.

In conclusion, I hate to say it, but Stephen King’s The Shining was not as appealing as I was expecting. The theme apparently seemed to be that following in the footsteps of those who hurt you in the past is probably not the smartest idea, the plot, and the backstories of each character was good. However, the portrayal of the story, the mood, the scare factor, the dialogue (especially the random rants that you can ignore) could be developed SO much better. I can sadly say that I was disappointed, and hopefully my mind will change with another Stephen King book. So far, however, I’m not impressed.