Synopsis: Insanity and Review: Solitary Confinement

Rating: 10/10 (1 October 2014)

Synopsis: Insanity and Review
With a violent alcoholic outburst, Jack Torrance hurts his son Danny which inevitably is the downfall of their family. This outburst causes the loss of Jack's teaching job. Soon, Jack finds a job as a caretaker for a hotel during the five winter months the road is closed. This seemingly perfect opportunity that arises includes; more time with his family, free time to write and finish a play, and most importantly money. Besides the fact that the main character Jack goes insane due to the isolation, there are also lots of questions that rise about Jack's son Danny and his sanity.
The director of this film,Stanley Kubrick, intended for Danny to be telepathic. This ability is also referred to in the film as, "The Shining" and is shared with the seasonal chef Dick Hallorann. As the time passes Jack slowly becomes insane, and the imaginary little boy in Danny's mouth named Tony starts to show him horrible images of what happened to the caretakers' family before them.
The turning point of Jack's insanity is when he threatens to bash Wendy's head in. During this same scene, Danny came into the room with bruises on his neck claiming that someone tried to strangle him. As soon as Wendy realized that her son may have something wrong with him, she sought out help. Unfortunately, the phone lines were down and there were twenty feet of snow on the roads restricting her search to find help.
Jack regresses very rapidly after this point. Wendy notices this when she goes to check on Jack and she finds a stack of hundreds of papers all saying the same sentence, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." Soon after the horrified Wendy realizes that her husband is insane, he comes up from behind and threatens to bash in her head. In return she hits him in the head with a baseball bat and locks him away in the kitchen pantry.
The screen view changes to show Dick feeling suspicious. He buys the next plane ticket out and gets a snow cat to make his way up the snowy mountain. Somehow Jack manages to unlock himself from the kitchen pantry while Tony is busy taking over Danny's body and writing "REDRUM" on the bathroom door while Wendy is asleep. Wendy wakes up just in time to find Jack breaking down the bedroom door with an ax. She locks herself and Danny in the bathroom and then shoves him out the window. Just before Danny reaches the ground, the cook arrives and goes in the hotel in search for the family. Jack hears him, so he leaves Wendy and Danny alone and goes downstairs to kill the cook. After he manages to do this, Jack chases Danny into the maze in search to find and kill him. He gives up and freezes to death while Wendy sees ghostly figures in the hotel.
The film ends with Wendy embracing Danny in her arms. They end up driving away in the snow cat to get help. The last scene is of a framed picture with Jack in the front and center in a ballroom titled, "Overlook Hotel, July 4th Ball, 1921".
Review: Solitary Confinement
With less than five months alone in a deserted hotel, Jack Torrance begins to go insane in the captivating 1980's film The Shining directed by Stanley Kubrick. Insanity can come about in various ways; it can arise from family origins, or it can be brought on by extended periods in solitary environments. Anyone and everyone can go insane, the right environments are just required. It's still possible to go insane in healthy environments but then the insanity isn't due to isolation, it's due to genetics. Although there are a couple reasons why a person may become insane, the sole reason why Jack Torrance goes insane in the film "The Shining" is because of isolation.
The fact that Jack could have been genetically insane is not realistic in this case. Insanity derived from genetics is not rational because the film shows no signs of insanity before he was isolated. Yes, the fact that he got dunk and dislocated his son's arm is horrible, but at least there is a reason for his violent behavior. He also had the clarity to realize this was a horrible thing to the point where he gave up drinking and sought out for another job that would be more fitting. Nothing indicates that he was going to freak out and try to murder his family until he became isolated.
It has been said that "just about any ordinary person can slip into madness, believes APA President Philip G. Zimbardo, PhD. In fact, all it may take to trigger the process is a special kind of blow." (Jennifer Daw). In the movie The Shining directed by Stanley Kubrick, it is strongly inferred that Jacks special kind of blow was the sudden change to isolation. The immense amount of free time with an almost infinite amount of work to get done lead to Jacks downfall. He had so much time to get everything done, but the work had to be perfect. Imagine how sitting in an office all day long thinking about plays would be painfully hard. But what broke him down mentally was the fact that he couldn't take a break to have fun or talk to friends, he was just trapped with his wife and son for months on end.