Tools of Characterization

Characterization in The Shining

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They say you can tell a lot about a man by the way he holds an axe and tries to kill his family.

Hmm. Maybe they don't actually say that… but that's definitely the case with Jack Torrance. Meanwhile, we also learn a lot about the way Wendy holds a bat. Until the later parts of the movie, we might have thought that Wendy didn't have the inner strength to knock her husband out with a bat. But she surprises us and Jack too by bashing him real good.

Finally, we learn a lot about how resourceful Danny is by the way he leads his father into the Overlook's hedge maze and escapes by sweeping away his tracks. It looks like Jack has made the mistake of underestimating his family, and the mistake costs him his life.

Family Life

Even before Jack Torrance loses his mind and tries to kill his wife and son, we can tell that things aren't all that great with their family. For starters, Jack "accidentally" dislocated his son Danny's arm when Danny was just a toddler. Oh yeah, and Jack was drunk and angry at the time.

On top of that, Jack is short with his wife Wendy long before the Overlook Hotel starts driving him nuts. So it's not like Jack was father of the year before this movie started. Instead, it seems like he gave the Overlook Hotel a lot to work with in turning him into an axe-wielding murderer.

Props

Did we mention that Jack really loves to hold an axe? Well, we're going to repeat it again because the axe fits nicely in the "props" tool of characterization. There are a lot of things you can use to kill people: knives, guns, bombs, poison. But Jack decides to honor the Overlook Hotel's time-honored tradition of killing with an axe.

And this tells us two important things about him: he's interested in killing his family in the most brutal way possible, and he has a deep sense of connection with the gruesome past of the Overlook Hotel, which he's trying to reenact.

Occupation

Jack is a former schoolteacher turned failed writer, and he couldn't be happier about it. Did you hear the sarcasm in that last sentence? 

It sounds like he had a pretty stable job as a teacher, but he got sick and tired of being a nobody and quit so he could devote himself to writing. The problem is that, as a writer, Jack doesn't have any good ideas. It would have been great if he'd figured that out before committing his whole family to his new life. But oh well.

If the Overlook Hotel needs to draw on Jack's frustrations to turn him into a murderer, it can find a lot of fuel in the anger Jack feels over being a failed writer. You can especially feel this anger in any of the scenes where Wendy comes to speak with him while he's writing.

Location

Jack Torrance really, really loves the Overlook Hotel. In fact, he loves the place so much that he's willing to do the bidding of the many ghosts who live inside it.

As Mr. Hallorann tells Danny Torrance earlier in the film, the Overlook Hotel might be an evil place because all the horrible stuff that's happened there has left a trace of itself. Well this trace definitely affects Jack and his family, and they react to it in different ways. While Wendy and Danny are horrified, Jack is totally attracted to the hotel and is willing to murder his family just to make sure they can all stay there together forever.