Stephen King’s “The Shining” is a Warning About the American Patriarchy

by E.G. Rand

Through main character Jack Torrance we look at inherited trauma, and how toxic masculinity hurts everyone.

If you have not read Stephen King’s “The Shining” you are missing out on a great piece of American literature. Full stop. The 1980 film directed by Stanley Kubrick is a triumph. However, in order to understand how deep this story goes into explaining modern American trauma, you need to read the novel. If you haven’t, go read it and come back 

We first meet Jack Torrance when he is applying for the caretaker job at the Overlook. It’s a very relatable situation: Jack is applying for a job he doesn't really want to stay in a rented place he also doesn’t really want. In Jack’s case, the Overlook Hotel is both. 

It is obvious that Jack is chafing in his as man of the house. He puts on a brave face for Wendy and Danny, but Jack finds family life burdensome. In a world where Patriarchy is the norm, Jack has no choice but to step up to the plate. So he masks his seething contempt for the hotel manager and agrees to the winter imprisonment. 

What is the Patriarchy?

According to Merrium Webster: a patriarchy is broadly described as control by men of a disproportionately large share of power. American feminists describe the patriarchy as the systems in America that keep men in power and/or oppress women. The patriarchy also favors white men. While women are slowly getting more seats at the table, when it comes to statistics America is still very much a patriarchy.

There are other, better blogs that can tell you more about what the patriarchy is and why it is bad. The important take away here is that it is bad for everyone. Jack Torrance should have benefited from this all white, all male dominated culture. 

But he didn’t. That's the double edged sword of patriarchy. Jack Torrance was a man who didn’t really want to be in charge. He wanted to write books and drink himself to death. The patriarchy pushes women down and drags men up, creating a situation where no one can be who they really are. 

Jack Torrance is a failure in the eyes of the patriarchy. Unable to support his family through writing or teaching and crushed by alcoholism, Jack Torrance felt spurned by the very system designed to accept him. His rage flattened everything around him, causing him to lose his job as a teacher and break his infant son’s arm. 

There is no doubt that Jack Torrance is an asshole. He is mean to everyone (especially his wife, who he later tries to murder.) He has an ego only matched by his inferiority complex. You aren’t supposed to feel sorry for him. It is obvious why he is the first choice for the malevolent force in the hotel. Psychologically, Jack from the Shining was the weakest animal in the herd. 

But Jack was dynamic. Before the influence of the Overlook, he is genuinely trying to get better. The caretaker job was an attempt to right the ship and provide for the family. Jack had stopped drinking after hurting his son. At the beginning of the novel we seen Jack in a genuine attempt to avoid the mistakes his own father made. 

When the snows come and the dark history of the hotel starts to haunt Jack, traumas come to surface.

Jack Torrance’s father is not discussed until we are deep in the story. As previously stated, we aren’t supposed to feel sorry for Jack, so we don’t hear about his father until it is already too late. 

While Jack dozes off in the heart of the hotel, he dreams of his father. Jack’s father is never named. He was a male nurse at a local hospital, an enormous man in untucked white scrubs which sometimes come home splattered with blood.

In the strange narrative of his father, Jack describes his childish devotion to the man who brutalized his home. While sparing him as a boy, Jack from the Shining witnesses his father beating his older brother and sister. However, the majority of the description is his father beating Jack’s mother. 

Jack’s mother is described as “non-descript” and a person who didn’t speak above a “mutter.” (Not a whisper, a mutter.)

A scene of domestic violence is described where Jack’s father, for no apparent reason, violently beats his wife with a cane. She is then taken to the hospital where he works and they both agree that she had “fallen down the stairs.” 

Primed for Violence 

Jack loved his father, but he also hated and feared him. He was the “white ghost god” of his childhood, and his shadow looms long over Jack’s life. Jack’s father drank heavily and this was often the catalyst for beatings. The violence against Jack’s mother caused his brother to leave home for the army and he died in Vietnam. The blood of Jack’s family was on his father’s white scrubs.

But Jack never got to confront his father, who died when Jack was thirteen. So he lives on in the halcyon glow of Jack’s childhood memories; a big man in a white coat that would throw him up into the air and sometimes drop him. As the hotel nestles into his psyche, Jack hovers in between being disgusted by his fathers viciousness towards his own family and understanding it. Ultimately, the hotel tips the scales. 

Psychological horror is all about a character that is both empathetic and disgusts the reader. By forcing us to watch Jack’s train of consciousness, we become complicit in his rationalizing domestic violence. Jack learned violence in his own home, and while the scientific research is still murky on whether we pass down trauma in our genetic material, there is no doubt that experiencing traumatic events during childhood stunts brain development. Early childhood trauma shapes who we are, especially domestic violence at the hands of a parent. 

Which is not to say that because you had an abusive parent you will become one. Lots of abused children go on to become wonderful parents. Jack Torrance was not one of those people. When the hotel convinces him to commit domestic violence, it does so in the voice of his dead father.

The Shining is really about the relationship between Danny and Jack, but because Danny Torrance gets a lot of great press already (including a movie) I didn’t feel the need to talk about him. As far as villains go, Jack’s arc is one of the most compelling. 

Jack Torrance turned out to be a drunk, abusive asshole just like his father. 

Don’t think I’m an apologist. Jack Torrance’s character started as an asshole and stayed one the whole time. But what if the hotel had not gotten involved? What if someone like Jack had not gotten married to Wendy? What if Wendy had access to safe, affordable birth control and abortions? What if Jack Torrance had been allowed to play out as a writer in some city somewhere? Would it have been better for him? Or would he have just drank himself to death in the gutter?

It is impossible to know. But the point is that Jack didn’t start the novel as a man who was going to kill his family. He was just someone who could. That is what makes The Shining a masterpiece– it reveals a world that we all live in where a percentage of men, given the opportunity, might just kill their family. This kind of brutal realism around violence is what makes King a master of psychological horror. 

Jack Torrance starts out relatable. Don’t we all hate working desk jobs? Don’t we all feel ill-suited for the roles we are thrust into? Daughter, son, employee, partner, parent– all of those labels can make a person feel like a square peg in a round hole. 

But most of us don’t go murdering our families about it. 

If you don’t want to read The Shining because it is the ultimate winter horror story, read it for Jack Torrance, who inherited trauma he could never understand. 

Drink your drink, Mr Torrance. 

What do you think? Comments are open!