The Shining

“I think all mothers shine a little, you know, at least until their kids grow up enough to watch out for themselves”

Hallorann tells Danny that mothers have a built-in psychic instinct that helps them keep their children safe during their earliest years. However, he tells Danny that Jack does not shine at all. Wendy is more susceptible to shining than Jack, which will help warn her of danger during her husband’s deterioration over the winter.

“It was possible to graduate from passive to active, to take the thing that had once driven you nearly to madness as a neutral prize of no more than occasional academic interest”

Jack tells himself that his time at the Overlook is helping him recover. He has been convalescing in one way or another for years at this point, but he is now ready to take a more active role in his own recovery. Jack’s past obsessions with writing and with academic prestige are not as important to him; rather, he simply wants to be a better—and more active—person, father, and husband.

“You could be stung, but you could also sting back. He believed that sincerely”

Here, Jack prepares the bug bomb in an effort to destroy the wasps’ nest. His sense of injustice is keen, and he feels a need to hit back at anything that hurts him. The targets of his grievance include the board that expelled him from his job at Stovington, Ullmann’s condescension, Wendy’s supposedly unfair judgments of his character, and anyone who celebrated his downfall.