The Shining

At the same time Danny is in Room 217, Wendy falls asleep while knitting. Jack is also asleep. He has decided that he will write the book. He feels like he owes the book to the hotel; his experience with the hedge animals makes him feel like the Overlook has enchanted him.

Jack remembers how much he loved his father until he was seven years old. Then he realized that his siblings and mother actually hated the man. When he was nine, Jack’s father beat his wife with a cane, which required a hospital visit to the same hospital where his father worked as a nurse. He beat her without warning during dinner, saying “Come on and take your medicine” (224), which is the same phrase the figure in Danny’s premonitions says while swinging the mallet. Jack’s brothers pulled their father off of their mother. At the hospital, their father lied to the doctor, saying she fell. Jack’s brother Brett joined the Army four days later. He died in Dong Ho in 1965 during the Vietnam War. Mike left three years later. Their father died a year after that. For five years, they lived well off the insurance money.