The Shining

Jack and Wendy each have troubled relationships with their parents. Jack’s father was abusive and addicted to alcohol. During one dinner when Jack was a child, he beat their mother with a cane at the table without warning. Jack eventually came to see this as an appalling act. However, by the time he is prepared to kill his own family for the Overlook, he views his father as a reasonable man whose ungrateful wife and children oppressed him. Jack views part of fatherhood as a duty to punish unruly, ungrateful children.

Jack adopts the advice of Delbert Grady, who referred to the murder of his family as a mere correction. When his girls tried to burn down the Overlook, he “corrected them most harshly” (352), along with his wife. He tells Jack, “Husbands and fathers do have certain responsibilities” (352), and that Danny “needs to be corrected, if you don’t mind me saying so. He needs a good talking-to, and perhaps a bit more” (352). Jack still has moments of fatherly lucidity, even while descending into the grips of the Overlook’s evil. For instance, when the pressure on the boiler grows too high, he considers sacrificing himself and letting it explode so that they can escape the hotel and live on his insurance money.