My Stephen King Worship

My feelings about The Shining are similar to Chris S.’s feelings about Ghost Story last week. This is one of my favorite books, and one of the books that made me a lover of horror.

I have my father to thank for introducing me to this book. My dad introduced me to Stephen King when I was fourteen years old. I was visiting him in Montana for a month. He lived about two miles up the side of a mountain with no neighbors. I had to stay home during the day while he was at work, and I was bored as hell, so he gave me the book Night Shift to read. I read “The Bogeyman” and it scared me to death (in fact, to this day I can’t sleep with the closet door open because of that story). I swore I would never read anything that by King again.

I lied.

I have now read most of Stephen King’s books, but it took me six years before I would pick up another novel by him. Again, it was my father who pushed me into it. My dad was a huge King fan—owned every novel King had written (to date). One weekend, when I was visiting my dad after he moved back to Pennsylvania, I was bored and he again tried to get me to read one of King’s novels. I reluctantly agreed and told him to pick one out for me. The book he chose was The Shining. I devoured it. I read it in a day. I couldn’t put it down. After that, I picked up another. And another. And another. I couldn’t get enough. I was in love.

So, I was excited to see a King novel on the reading list for this class, and I think The Shining was an excellent choice. As I think I’ve mentioned before, I’m not a huge ghost story fan, but this is one of the exceptions. From the complexity of the characters to the majesty of the hotel to the brilliantly interwoven themes of human frailty and human resilience, this novel resonates within me. I have read it several times and have seen both movies, and each time, something new speaks to me. This time, it was some of the last lines of the book that really got to me:

“The world’s a hard place, Danny. It don’t care. It don’t hate you and me, but it don’t love us, either. Terrible things happen in the world, and they’re things no one can explain. Good people die in bad, painful ways and leave the folks that love them all alone. Sometimes it seems like it’s only the bad people who stay healthy and prosper. The world don’t love you, but your momma does and so do I. You’re a good boy. You grieve for your daddy, and when you feel you have to cry over what happened to him, you go into a closet or under your covers and cry until it’s all out of you again. That’s what a good son has to do. But see that you get on. That’s your job in his hard world, to keep your love alive and see that you get on, no matter what. Pull your act together and just go on.” (447)

Two years ago, my mother and brother both died of lung cancer about four weeks apart, and I’ve had a very hard time coping with it. When I read this little speech by Hallorann, I was struck by it. "That's your job in this hard world, to keep your love alive and see that you get on..." Wow. How appropriate.

I realized that this is one of the reasons I love King. So much of his work speaks to me on a deep level, and every time I read a work by him, it speaks to me anew.

I once read an article (I don’t remember where) in which King spoke about writing The Shining as a way to work out some of his own demons, namely the almost uncontrollably anger he would sometimes feel toward his children. I can relate to that. No one can make me as angry as my children can. I think it’s because I don’t love anyone as much as I love them. If I were indifferent to them, I wouldn’t get angry. Like King, I often write to excise my demons. My first novel was largely about dealing with my daughter’s then-new diagnosis of autism. My current novel is about my frustration with the American political system and the rampant hate-mongering that seems to be spread throughout the world, largely by extremist religious groups.

But I think that it’s interesting that as much as King is talking about being haunted by anger, alcoholism, suspicion, and the inability to “let go” of a grudge in this book, he is also talking about the resilience of the human heart and the human spirit. Danny forgives his father for breaking his arm. Wendy, despite her wariness of Jack, takes him back and continues to try to save their marriage. Jack, although he feels he has hit rock bottom, keeps trying to set things right and get their family back on track. Even in the end of the book there are moments when the “real” Jack fights his way through the control the hotel has over him, which ultimately gives his family the chance to flee. I think this is something I want to really consider as I am writing my current novel. I want to make sure that I have a sense of hope there in the end. I sometimes tend toward nihilism in my writing. I want to give my audience something positive to cling to, though.

I have to admit that I love Kubrick’s film representation of the book—and I like it better than the mini-series King had made years later—but I understand why King wanted to remake it. Even though that movie is, in my opinion, one of the best horror movies ever (and one of the best film adaptations of a King novel), it fails to show this incredible complexity that King interweaves, and more importantly, it misses those themes of human frailty and resilience altogether. I feel the Kubrick film also misses the hope that King infuses. I’m actually looking forward to the sequel. I want to see how Danny grows… I wonder if he’ll be going by Tony now.