SOURCE: “Stanley Kubrick's The Shining,” in Forum, Vol. XXVI, No. 3, Summer, 1985, pp. 21-38.

In the following essay, Walters considers The Shining an “artistic fable” that explores the impotence of the modern artist.

I.

The more fearful the world becomes, the more art becomes abstract.

—Paul Klee

As carefully crafted as Edgar Allan Poe's “The Masque of The Red Death,” Stanley Kubrick's version of The Shining is a clever exercise in deception. On the most superficial level, The Shining functions as an epic film of modern terror that tells the story of Jack Torrance, a writer possessed by the forces of evil, who makes a vain attempt to destroy his wife and son. Kubrick's version of Stephen King's thriller, however, is much more than a simple illustration of popular literature. Embedded within the obligatory framework of the gothic novel lurks an artistic fable of decisive consequences. On the most...