SOURCE: “What about Jack? Another Perspective on Family Relationships in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining,”¹ in Literature/Film Quarterly Vol. 23, No. 1, 1995, pp. 68-78.

In the following essay, Manchel examines the protagonist of The Shining, Jack Torrance, contending that “there are mitigating circumstances for his diabolical role in the disintegration of his family.”

In the end we all come to be cured of our sentiments. Those whom life does not cure death will. The world is quite ruthless in selecting between dream and reality, even where we will not. Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting.

—Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

If anyone back in 1980 wanted to see a modern dysfunctional household being demolished by violence, they could watch Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, a screen adaptation of Stephen King's 1977 best-selling novel. This horror story of a family in crisis ends with Jack Torrance, an insane husband...