Jack Torrance

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John Daniel "Jack" Torrance is a fictional character, the protagonist in the 1977 novel The Shining by Stephen King. He was portrayed by Jack Nicholson in the 1980 movie adaptation of the novel, and by Steven Weber in the miniseries.

[edit] The Novel

Jack Torrance is a writer and former teacher who is trying to rebuild his and his family's life after his drinking problem and volatile temper lost him his teaching position at a small preparatory school. Having given up alcohol, he accepts a position maintaining a large and isolated hotel in Colorado for the winter, in the hope this will salvage his family, re-establish his career, and give him the time and privacy to finish a promising play. He moves to the hotel with his wife, Wendy, and young son, Danny, who is telepathic and sensitive to supernatural forces.

Danny finds out that Overlook Hotel is haunted from cook Dick Hallorann, who is also psychic (in fact, it is he who coins the term "the shining" to describe the powers he and the boy possess) and who teaches Danny to use his gift to defend himself and his family from the evil forces at work in the old building. Jack, however, succumbs to both cabin fever and alcoholism, and allows the hotel to convince him to hate his own wife and child. Jack has encounters with ghosts of previous staff of the hotel, who insist he had always been working there, and must kill his family so he can be promoted to a managerial position. In fact, the Hotel is not only haunted by the ghosts of those who died violently within it, but the entire Hotel is itself host to a being of unknown origin, who wishes to coerce the father into killing the boy; apparently, the souls and, perhaps, special abilities of those killed in the building belong to the entity, and the Hotel believes that if it can harness the boy's "shining" (a recurring supernatural ability in the Stephen King universe coined for those indivduals who simultaneously exhibit clairvoyant and psychic abilities), then it can gather enough power to "break free" of the building in which it has somehow become trapped in.

Jack pursues Wendy, who manages to knock him out as he tries to kill her. She locks him up in a food storage room, and realizes that she is stranded there at the hotel (Jack had cut off all radio communications and also sabotaged the Snowcat, a large vehicle which was their only means of transport.) Jack is later helped out of the food storage room by the ghost of the previous caretaker Grady, who murdered his own family before committing suicide.

Jack then brutally attacks Wendy with a roque mallet he found, although she manages to escape. He is interrupted with the arrival of Hallorann, whom he almost beats to death.

Jack finds and confronts Danny and is about to kill him when his son manages to reach through the hotel's power and redeem his father moments before the hotel explodes. Wendy, Danny and Hallorann escape but Jack dies inside.

[edit] The Film

The film had a far more grim version for its protagonist. Whereas in the novel Jack Torrance was somewhat of a tragic hero who meant well but whose shortcomings lead to his defeat, the film all but implied that Jack was insane from the start.

The film's first major deviation from the source material occurs when Jack attacks Hallorann. Instead of merely injuring him with the mallet, Jack brutally kills him with an axe.

When Jack hears Danny scream, he chases his son to a hedge maze (in the book it was topiary animals that came alive) outside the hotel. By that time, Danny has erased his own footprints, so his father won't be able to follow him. Wendy and Danny escape the hotel in the Snowcat. Jack gets lost in the maze and freezes to death.

Rather than redeem himself like he did in the book, Jack succumbs to his demons and is ultimately damned. The film ends with an old photograph of the hotel that has Jack in it - Jack has been ultimately absorbed into the hotel.

[edit] The Miniseries

Unsatisfied with Kubrick's film and the liberties the director took with the novel, King decided to make a three-part miniseries of his vision of the story. It was well-received by King fans, but received mixed attention from the critics.

Jack Torrance here is presented as a more sympathetic character than he was in Kubrick's film. His role is pretty much the same as it was in the novel, but the ending is changed somewhat. While Jack did redeem himself in the book, the boiler exploding was due to the hotel's negligence. In the miniseries, Jack Torrance deliberately intervenes and causes the boiler to explode, sacrificing himself.

The end of the miniseries has a scene not present from the book: Danny graduating from high school, while his spectral father looks on.