Summary Of The Novel : The Shining

What is horror? Webster's Collegiate Dictionary gives the primary definition of horror as "a painful and intense fear, dread, or dismay." It stands to reason then that "horror fiction" is fiction that elicits those emotions in the reader. An example of a horror film is "The Shining", directed by Stanley Kubrick. Stanley Kubrick was a well-known director, producer, writer and cinematographer. His films comprised of unique, qualitative scenes that are still memorable but one iconic film in his collection of work is The Shining. Many would disagree and say that The Shining was not his best work and he could have done better yet, there are still those who would say otherwise. This film was not meant to be a “scary pop-up” terror film but

The Haunting by Joan Lowery Nixon is a mystery novel about how a teenage girl learns about the brave women in her family who did not even go near their famous haunted plantation, Graymoss. Fifteen year old Lia Starling just received the message that her great grandmother is giving her mother Anne, the property of Graymoss plantation. It has been kept in good care since Charlotte Blevin’s, (Lia’s great, great, great grandmother) grandfather died during the Civil War. Her parents dreamed of having a large family with a dozen unadopted children. But her parents refuse to listen to anyone about the evil spirits that haunts Graymoss. Lia gives her all to find out who or what the spirits wants even when she is scared to death. In the end, she solves

Edgar Allen Poe’s chilling short story Mask of the Red Death begins with people dropping like flies, as the king of the land decides to take his close friends with him to live in one of his palaces. leaving his subjects to survive on their own. A puzzling creature known as the Red Death has been terrorizing and killing off people one by one, and no one has a way to stop it. Through characterization of both Prospero and the Red Death, Poe foreshadows Prospero’s eventual death in the end of the story.

First and foremost, The Shining uses setting as a main factor to help portray America and its instability. The film starts out with a deep winding road along with the Rocky Mountains that can be taken to pursue the idea of the struggle that lay ahead for the characters in the film or for the Natives that this film tries to implicitly show. The scenery can represent America and as it is shown in a continuous shot, it also displays the endless opportunities America is known for, however as the camera continuously pans for a few more seconds, a sense of despair comes across you and the long twisty road suggests the impossibility of escape. The manager of the Overlook, Ullman suggests that the Hotel is haunted which ties in with the fact that the Hotel and America has had a very aggressive history that may still haunt us today. Reporter Bill Blakemore pointed out in Room 237 that Kubrick’s team had to research the town and hotel’s history, which showed Navajo tribe tensions with the the white men in the early 1900s. Blackmore also writes about how the name of the hotel connects with the fact that this film addresses the fact that America overlooks the Native American genocide or even the racism in the country.

Edgar Allen Poe's “The Masque of the Red Death” is an extravagant allegory of the futility of trying to escape death. In the story, a prince named Prospero tries to avoid the Red Death through isolation and seclusion. He hides behind the impenetrable walls of his castle and turns his back on the rest of the world. But no walls can stop death because it is unavoidable and inevitable. Through the use of character, setting, point of view, and symbol, Poe reveals the theme that no one, regardless of status, wealth or power can stay the passing of time and the inevitable conclusion of life itself, death.

Michael Ruiz once said, “Everyone dies. There’s no point in fighting it.” In Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe, there is a disease that kills almost everyone in a country so the king brings all survivors into a castle to prevent it from killing anyone else, although it still ends up getting in from a ghost, and wipes everyone else out. In Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe, Poe uses gothic elements such as a gloom setting, supernatural beings, curses, and air of mystery and suspense.

When it comes to reading literature the most challenging yet important task is to understand the purpose of the author's writing. In Romantic era literature understanding the emotions and thoughts that are created in the reader's mind are essential to gaining a clear message that the writer is trying to send. In Edgar Allen Poe’s short story “The Masque of the Red Death” the narrator immediately introduces the “Red Death”; a disease that has been spreading throughout Prince Prospero’s country; killing his people within half an hour of contracting the disease. Throughout the story the author continuously uses diction and syntax to create suspense and evoke a grim tone to the reader. In the “Masque of The Red Death” Poe produces fearful imagery in the reader's mind through creating a supernatural presence in the setting.

“Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality,” wrote Edgar Allen Poe, a famous writer of horror stories. In other words, words can’t give the reader a feeling until you learn the deeper positive or negative meaning behind the word. Similarly, Poe and King use this same idea about the duality of life: something that seems positive also brings with it negatives. “The Masque of The Red Death” by Edgar Allen Poe and “One For The Road” by Stephen King are two works of suspense that examine the negatives of life. Two excellent writers, Poe and King use imagery and foreshadowing to predict outcomes and build moods.

Stephen King’s The Shining has maintained its cult status since its release in 1977. The Shining begins with Jack Torrance receiving a position as the winter caretaker for The Overlook Hotel, an isolated hotel in the Colorado Rockies. Jack hopes the stay will be therapeutic and allow him to focus on writing, family, and less on alcohol. As time progresses, unsettling events begin to transpire for Jack, his son Danny, and his wife Wendy. The intensity of the gothic novel came to life by the legendary Stanley Kubrick in 1980. The book was admired by fans, but Kubrick’s reimagining made it the iconic classic that it is today. Stephen King was not as fond of the movie. Although some of Kubrick’s take on The Shining complements the book, King

The horror novel, The Shining, written by Stephen King, is the terrifying account of a small, fictitious family fighting to maintain sanity in a struggle against the sinister, almost personified, Overlook Hotel over the treacherous western winter. Located in Colorado, the hotel seems to draw short-tempered, powerful men to perform evil acts against their families. King utilizes many literary works and themes, including Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, “The Masque of the Red Death,” to build up his own novel; forging his work into one of the greatest horror novels of all time.     Edgar Allen Poe wrote “The Masque of the Red Death,” in 1842. This short story is an extended metaphor of the inevitability of death in any individual; no one person

A number of strange incidents occur throughout the story. Jack finds a wasps' nest while maintaining the roof, uses an appropriate wasp bomb on it, and puts it in Danny's room. That night, although Jack had checked there were no wasps still in the nest, Danny is stung several times, and when Jack manages to put a bowl over the nest, there are many wasps trapped inside. Then in an almost hypnotic fit after spending too much time going through the hotel's papers in the boiler room, Jack smashes the radio, effectively cutting them off from the rest of the world as snow has fallen heavily, and reaching the nearest town has become impossible except by snowmobile.

Television today serves as a method to confront our societal fears in a comfortable setting, like books and oral tales did hundreds of years ago. The film The Shining directed by Stanley Kubrick, although a modern medium, still draws from the original gothic novel. Compared to The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, The Shining plays on the same classic and applicable anxiety of finding terror within the nuclear family. Kubrick uses the gothic theme to address horror originating from family relationships, additionally taking the idea of “the gothic novel” to a heightened level through invoking despair in his audience rather than hope as Walpole did in his novel. Despair in The Shining is conveyed by

As a gothic writer, Edgar Allan Poe created horror using gloom as his weapon. Hidden within the suspenseful story of “The Masque of Red Death” is an allegorical tale of how individuals deal with the fear of death as time passes. Frantic activities and pleasures (as represented by Prince Prospero and his guests) seek to wall out the threat of death. However, the story reminds the reader that death comes “like a thief in the night”(Poe 3), and even those who seek peace and safety shall not escape. Poe uses symbolism to illustrate that man cannot hide from his own mortality.

The character of Dan “Danny” Torrance is best known for his role in the fictional story of The Shining and Doctor Sleep by Stephen King. As a child Danny goes through a large amount of heavy trauma ranging from domestic abuse from his father to being inside of a hotel during a mass boiler explosion. His life as he grew up was riddled with night terrors and hallucinations driving Danny to become an alcoholic in order to drive away the nightmare images and the memories of the explosion and the death of his father.

The classic elements were invented by Horace Walpole in 1764 in his novel The Castle Of Qtranto. These elements have been used in a variety of ways in different aspects books films short stories even today. Stephen King uses these elements in his novel The Shining alternating them to fit his needs.