Fractured Reflections: Unraveling Family Struggles in Stephen King’s The Shining In Stephen King's iconic novel The Shining, readers are taken through a rollercoaster of events occurring within the Torrance family walls. Isolated in the Overlook Hotel for the winter, the Torrance family serves as a representative of the nuclear family struggling with tones of paranormal encounters. Jack, a patriarchal figure within the novel, is shown going through struggles of alcoholism and tendencies of abuse as well as abuse of his own. Wendy, a feminist figure within this story, explores her journey through denial and recovery …show more content…
The first of the novel is seen with Jack sitting in the office of Mr. Ullman; he is shown constantly bickering in his mind, creating a condescending tone towards his future boss. He wants this job, this power to look after the hotel, to be in control of something. In book five of The Shining, King demonstrates Jack’s true colors of the power the character craves, “The mallet slammed down behind her and she threw herself forward, sobbing,” (King p.601). Jack resorts to the low-life, vile antics of dominance that is his own messed up way of asserting his dominance against his wife and child. This results in Jack becoming physically with his family due to the greed of the hotel consuming him. Furthermore, scholar Elizabeth Jean Hornbeck presents the abuse in The Shining as a retelling of domestic violence seen in Wendy and Jack’s childhoods, due to it being reflected in their adult lives. Both Jack and Wendy had abusive adults present in their lives, but the way that they coped with these tragedies varies immensely. Hornbeck claims that Jack’s previous trauma is the cause of his monstrous evolution, “For King, Jack’s experience of abuse as a child makes him