The Shining (1977) is a horror novel by American author Stephen King. King's third published novel, the success of the book firmly established King as a pre-eminent author in the genre. An important film based upon the book, The Shining directed by Stanley Kubrick, was released in 1980. The book was later adapted into a television mini-series.

Basic Plotline

Jack Torrance is a temperamental writer who is trying to rebuild his and his family's life after his drinking problem and volatile temper cause him to lose his teaching position at a small preparatory school. Having given up alcohol, he accepts a position maintaining a large and isolated hotel in Colorado for the winter, in the hope this will reestablish him as a responsible person, enable him to finish a promising play, and resume his career. He moves to the hotel (the Overlook) with his wife, Wendy, and young son, Danny, who is telepathic (the "shining" of the title) and sensitive to supernatural forces. The hotel is possessed by a life force or is itself sentient and feeds especially off people with psychic powers. Danny, who has had premonitions of the Hotel's danger to his family, begins seeing ghosts and frightening visions from the hotel's past, but tolerates them in the hope that they are not dangerous in the present. He doesn't tell his parents because he senses how important the job of caretaker is to his father's and his family's future. Having difficulty possessing Danny, the hotel begins to possess Jack, frustrating his need and desire to work as he becomes increasingly unstable, and gradually turns him to its purposes.

Genre

The story is an entry in the supernatural or horror genre that effectively uses the concept of a building having a conscious will (or a soul, as it were), an idea perhaps first explored by Edgar Allan Poe in The Fall of the House of Usher.

The Book

The author has said that The Shining includes an exploration of alcohol dependence and relationships with parents and children in one's life.

The Shining has been used as an example of how to structure a story to keep the plotline moving. Like many King stories it reaches a climax from which point the story moves inexorably to its conclusion.

Trivia

• The story was originally going to be set in an amusement park. But while on vacation, King and his wife Tabitha were staying at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado while the staff was preparing for the winter off. The Stanley Hotel was used in the ABC mini-series. King has also said that he based Jack Torrance on himself.

• The title came from the John Lennon song "Instant Karma". In the song is the line "We all shine on". King wanted to call the book "The Shine" but changed it when he realized that "shine" was a derogatory name for blacks.