'The Shining' & Our Illogical Fear of Animals

Oct 29, 2020

"When did we become these sinking stones?
When did we build this broken home?
Holding each other like ransom notes,
Dropping our hearts to grip our brothers’ throats"
-Nothing More,
"This Is the Time"

Though written over 40 years ago, The Shining remains one of Stephen King's most iconic pieces of work. He brings to life a broken family, suffering the consequences of a recovering alcoholic father -- his accidental child abuse, his lost job after an outburst of violent rage at a student, his dark secret that made him give up drinking for good -- as they stay at the historic Overlook Hotel nestled deep in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Jack and Wendy Torrance, along with their son Danny, are trapped up there all alone as the temperature drops and the snow piles up, watching over the hotel during its closed season. Or is the hotel watching over them. . . ?

Throughout the novel, King makes use of vivid imagery as the Overlook springs to life around this family, warping the line between life and death. With his words, he describes terrifying images of mundane objects coming alive with animal-like qualities. He uses our primal fear of otherness, of being hunted, of the unknown, to make the ordinary extraordinarily terrifying. We've all had moments where a trick of the light made something innocuous appear threatening or heard a sound in the dead of night that we hoped was just the house settling. Unfortunately for the Torrances, they aren't alone in the Overlook, but what they don't realize is that the hotel itself is the scariest creature of all.

The Wasps

The wasps are the first major indication to the Torrance family that something isn't quite right at the Overlook. After believing Jack killed a large wasps' nest with a bug bomb and bringing the vacant shell to Danny as a gift, the parents are awoken in the middle of the night by their son's screams as the slain wasps come back to exact their revenge. What the family doesn't realize is that these are just a few of the thousands of guests at the Overlook who have overstayed their mortal checkout. What we don't realize when reading this part of the book is that the wasps' nest represents the Overlook itself: a living creature, an entity teeming with thousands of lives, and even after death, the residents remain inside forever. And they, like the wasps, want to do harm to any living soul that interferes with them, to also make them permanent guests.

The Carpet

Throughout the book, King refers to the hallway carpet's pattern as sinuous, twining, like an optical illusion moving of its own accord in your periphery. These descriptions evoke a feeling that the carpet is writhing under the protagonists' feet, like snakes weaving around and encircling their ankles, ensnaring them in its grasp.

"Deep blue pile, it was entwined with what seemed to be a surrealistic jungle scene full of ropes and vines and trees filled with exotic birds. It was hard to tell just what sort of birds, because all the interweaving was done in unshaded black, giving only silhouettes."

Each character notes the pattern, and as they slowly come to terms with the fact that the hotel is alive, the floor itself appears more and more sinister. It's like the Floor is Lava game, but there are no chairs or cushions to save you from walking along the serpentine patterns. Though the carpeting itself never poses a direct threat to the family, it heightens their fear and paranoia, particularly as Jack slowly loses touch with reality and the Overlook channels its violent desires into his mind, driving him to slaughter his family.

The Extinguisher

Similar to the carpet, the fire extinguisher -- an old-fashioned thing, with a long flat hose connecting a red valve to a brass nozzle -- resembles a snake and is described in a way to make it sound alive with words like muzzle, whicker, curled up, strike, and sleeping. Danny even acknowledges that his fear of the object is silly:

"It was stupid to think that it looked like some poison snake from 'Wide World of Animals' that had heard him and woken up. Even if the stitched canvas did look a little bit like scales."

As he attempts to pass by the extinguisher, it rears back to strike at him, causing him to wonder if some of the wasps that attacked him came back to exact revenge (again). This is one of the first encounters Danny has with inanimate objects coming to life in the hotel, but he, like his parents, brushes it off as his own imagination (an impressive feat for a five-year-old).

The Hedges

The hedge animals -- a rabbit, a dog, a buffalo, and two lions -- pose the most direct threat to the family (aside from Jack himself). Jack's first encounter with them is certainly frustrating for the reader, as the animals morph when his eyes are averted from pleasant guardians into aggressive attackers.

Like the fire extinguisher, if we were in this situation at the hotel, we would probably want to write it off as our mind playing tricks on us, but as an outsider reading a horror story, it's hard to believe that Jack could so easily let this chilling occurrence go, failing to understand the gravity of his situation. It shows how terrified we are of something we thought to be absolutely true -- plants' inability to come to life and attack us, in this instance -- being proven false; we often lack the ability to cope with these realizations, failing to make changes that could allow us to effectively deal with the situation.

Ultimately, because Jack refuses to acknowledge the threat of the hedge animals and get out of the hotel, this leads to him succumbing to the hotel's power, nearly killing his wife and son as they flee from both him and the animals upon their escape.

The Mallet

One of the most iconic differences between the book and the film is the absence of Jack's "Heeeere's Johnny!" ax. In the book, he instead uses a roque mallet -- roque is a game similar to croquet that was apparently outdated even in the 70s -- to attack his family and their rescuer, Dick Hallorann. At first glance, this doesn't appear significant; it's still a suitable weapon to bash his family's brains in. However, with King's reliance on animal metaphors to describe the Overlook, it appears this was done with a purpose, with Jack using the head of the mallet to attack. He swings it up and strikes like a serpent, over and over, to incapacitate his victims, leaving them to suffer from their injuries before completely killing them.

Though an ax is scarier than a mallet -- with its sharp blade, indicating impending death as each swing lands on target -- which is likely why the ax was chosen in the film, in the book, the beatings with the head of a mallet draw more visceral, violent image in the reader's mind of a predator attacking their prey. Death by mallet will be drawn-out, gruesome, painful, letting Jack, the killer, enjoy the violence of torturing his family.

The It

Animals are often referred to as it, not he or she or they, because of our ingrained speciesism to view them as inferior to ourselves. During the climax of the book, as Jack is racing around the hotel searching for Wendy and Danny, roque mallet in hand, he is no longer described as human. Danny tells Jack in their final face-off, "'You're it, not my daddy. You're the hotel.'" Once Jack allows the Overlook to overtake him, we believe he is lost forever and no longer exists in his corporeal body.

This animalization of Jack is not only a way to dehumanize him, but it also detaches the reader from any sympathy we had for him. After all, we were privy to some of his most private thoughts, his darkest secrets, and even if we didn't always agree with him (or even like him), we could understand that he was truly trying to be a better person before the Overlook tainted his mind with thoughts of murder.

But all his hard work gets wiped away under the hotel's influence, and we must see him as nonhuman, like an animal, to forget our connection with him and to be thankful when he perishes at the end. We must be put into a mindset to think that Jack's death is the only option for the protagonists to escape, that he poses too great a threat to let him live. This is similar to what we do to farmed animals, justifying their slaughter by de-individualizing them (calling them it, numbering them instead of naming them, breeding them en masse) and then developing excuses so we can justify murdering them (protein, other animals kill animals, human supremacy).

The Point

So, after all this, does it really matter that we use animalistic words and descriptions to generate fear? Perhaps it doesn't in the context of a fictional story, but we should still be aware of how others perceive our words. If we describe a creepy fire extinguisher as a snake, it not only reinforces an illogical fear of that fire extinguisher, but it also perpetuates our fear and demonization of snakes. Since most people still participate in the exploitation of and discrimination against certain species of animals, that makes the words we use regarding them that much more important; we need to consider the consequences our words have on the thought processes of others.

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