Supernatural Forces In The Hotel example essay topic

The Shining The Shining is about a white middle class dysfunctional family that suffers from natural and supernatural stresses in an isolated Rocky mountain hotel... The father, a former teacher turned writer, is portrayed as a habitual drinker, wife- and child-abuser, with a kind of evil streak The mother is shown as a battered woman. The film suggests that due to the abuse at the hands of his father and the passivity of his mother, the child of this family developed psychological problems. He had imaginary friends and began to see frightening images. Early in the film, a psychologist is called in to treat the troubled child: and she calmed the mother with a statement to the effect that", These things come and go but they are unexplainable". This juncture of the film is a starting point for one of the central themes of the film which is: how a fragile family unit is besieged by unusual forces both natural and supernatural which breaks and possesses and unites with the morally challenged father while the mother and the child through their innocence, love, and honesty triumph over these forces.

One motif which reappears in the film is the power of nature, especially in relation to the individual. In fact, the film begins with a majestic shot of the Rocky Mountains showing its beauty and height. The beauty of nature and even friendliness of nature changes as the film develops. As the movie progresses the snow still seems white and pure, almost virgin like, but nature becomes an isolating force, not providing the family with a retreat from the pressures of modern life, but forcing the family to turn in on its dysfunctional and psychopathic self. Imprisoned by the snow and the tall mountains, the family seems weak and vulnerable. Nature has no compassion for the plight of the family, nor is it a malicious force; it is merely a power with constructive or destructive potential.

We see its constructive side when it freezes Johnny to death. The weakness of the individual is another motif in the film. Perhaps we see this most clearly with the boy who is sensitive to and harassed by the supernatural forces in the hotel. As we know from everyday experience children seem weak because they are small and usually are very sensitive and easily hurt by the negative and destructive outbursts of adults. Our general sense of a child's vulnerability is heightened by the way the child of The Shining is forced to grapple with such evil and terrible forces which are likely to be difficult for all of us. Another way the weakness of the individual is shown in The Shining is through the contrast between the family and the large hotel.

Through out the film, the hotel seems just so large that even if it wasn't haunted we could easily understand why one would not be comfortable in it. All the rooms seem so spacious and we know that it was not built for a small family but for hundreds of people. For example, we see the boy riding his bike through the huge hallways of the hotel which almost seem never ending. The mazes outside of the hotel also convey the sense of human impotence in the face of more powerful structures.

Also in the scene where Johnny throws the ball at the walls of his large study room we get the feeling that he is trying angrily and bitterly to master the hotel, an attempt which ultimately fails. Johnny is arguably the weakest individual of The Shining. Even in the beginning of the film we get a feeling for his weakness as he interviews with the proprietors of the hotel. As an employee he is subject to the authority of his employers. As a writer he seems to be impoverished and forced to take a job which few people want. Al though, he tells his employers that he would actually enjoy the solitude of the hotel, we get the feeling that he chose to take the job because he is self-destructive.

When we watch him yell at his wife for disturbing him at his typing he seems so weak and bitter that he can only let his frustrations out on his wife. Thus, he is unable to manage his feelings or his family and ultimately he is unable to manage the hotel. Interestingly, he yells at his wife for causing him to neglect his contractual responsibility to take care of the hotel. He fears that she will cause him to lose his job and be forced to shovel snow in Boulder.

But he is the only character in the film who is entirely swallowed up by the experience in the hotel. It seems as if his identify submerges with the past caretaker of the hotel and with the past carnage. Somehow, as a man who denies or is bitter about his weakness, he is in an even weaker position than his wife and child who are psychologically stronger for being honest about their vulnerabilities. In the end or perhaps from the very beginning he is entirely subsumed in the evil forces that lurked in the hotel for hundreds of years. One way of another he wasn't able to escape his destiny.

THE SHINING, 142 minutes Director: Stanley Kubrick Producer: Stanley Kubrick Director of Photography: Ronnie VianuCinemtography: John Alcott Screenplay by: Stanley Kubrick; Dianne Johnson Based on the novel by Steven King Lead Actors: Jack Torrence Jack Nicholson Wendy Torrence Shelly Duvall Danny Torrence Danny Lloyd Halloran Scat man Crothers Delbert Grady Philip Stone Lloyd Joe Turtle.