Stephen King's The Shining

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The Shining was an interesting novel to read as it was my first Non-Dark Tower Stephen King. I read this book for two reasons, I loved the film and Stephen King was the only author I thought of when I saw horror on the bingo list. So, if you’re a fan of the film and looking for the book to be the same it is not. Personallly I preferred the movie over the novel but the novel had some things that were better than its theatrical version.
To start off, the narrator for the audiobook was great. He really sold all the characters for me. His name was Campbell Scott but this and Cell are his only Stephen King novels. When it comes to narrator I find they fit perfectly to at least one character in the novel and Campbell Scott embodied Jack Torrence …show more content…
So, The Shining has a small cast of 4 characters Jack Torrence, Wendy Torrence, Danny Torrence and Dick Hallorann. For the most part, we’re focused on the Torrence family and only near about the last third of the novel to we see the return of Dick. Something that the movie did was spoil me a bit but honestly, I felt like since the novel is so different I think it made it better. Jack Torrence was such a sympathetic and tragic character I couldn’t help but have a constant dread for when he turned on his family. I kept thinking ‘Please don’t do it’ over and over because I cared about Jack and wanted him to be happy. Wendy was a great character as well. Compared to movie Wendy she was nothing like her. Wendy in the book was smart, level-headed, and a deeply caring person. Jack and Wendy’s relationship was so genuine that it made the ending all the sadder for her and Jack in the end. Danny in the novel seemed very mature for his age and it took me some mental gymnastics to consider him 5 years old with how grown up he seemed. Dick Halloran was shine the whole time he was focused on. His quest to make it in time to save Danny was such a relief from the dreariness of the Overlook. In the end, all the characters “shined” but if I had to pick a favorite it is Jack. I felt like he was a tragic hero in every sense of the term. A troubled man just trying to make it in life for his family but anger issues lead him down a bad road but in the
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