One thing I wonder, if you've spent so much time analysing it, what do you make of the "you've always been here", and the picture of Jack in the photo from 1920? Also, the tell-tale that the hotel was built on an old reservat?
Hee--yes, there's a throwaway line that it's built on an Indian Burial Ground maybe according to the manager-I don't think that's true in the book. I think there's a big involved theory online that suggests that the whole movie is supposed to be about the genocide of Native Americans, as the hotel decorations are also Native designs. Personally I think it's just a little throwaway idea that could or could not be significant--maybe it wasn't even really a burial ground but just a place the Indians respected because bad things already happened there. But building anything on an Indian Burial ground is just shorthand in America for the house being haunted, so I like that inclusion. (I love that South Park where Kyle buys his fish at the Ancient Indian Burial Ground Pet Shop--I wonder exactly when that whole idea got started. Did pioneers tell stories about people building log cabins on Indian Burial Grounds and them being haunted?)
As for the picture at the end, I definitely don't think it's that Jack was reincarnated or anything like that. I read it sort of like in The Haunting of Hill House when the house seems to be telling Eleanor to "come home" and stay there. Jack feels at home at the Overlook because he's vulnerable to it, and in the end he's absorbed into it as if he's "always been here." I assume the same thing happened to Grady, who now seems to have a place there in the past. Perhaps Lloyd was some Mafia guy who got whacked there and now he's the bartender. It could have been a silly ending but I think it really works because of the way the hotel works.
If someone who is not (heh, like me, and obviously Jack), I think that sceneario works in the exact opposite way, the endless time becomes a hinder, because you no longer have any kind of deadlines to beat, no limited amount of time in which you must write, if you're going to get it down, and also, you get no outside influences or impulses, which in itself can kill the creativity.
Hee! Yes--it's such the classic fantasy "if I had time, I would write a lot." But of course very few writers have the luxury of being able to devote their whole day to writing. The mostly learn by just making themselves write around their job and family. The one thing you need as a freelancer is self-discipline.
This doesn't really matter, but the "got any ideas" question could just as well be "got any ideas of how you will continue from where you are now?", can't it? He could be stuck someplace in his story.
I hadn't thought of that but you're right--she could be asking about how he's going to solve some problem. It's just that you'd think we'd know something about it that way. Also it's hard to imagine Jack really telling Wendy about a problem he was having. It's funny because again, in The Changeling there's a similar thing where he's taken a job doing a series of lectures in theory at a university, too, and his friend says, "Have you done any writing?" And he says something like, "Still working on that third movement. Same old problem. Well, maybe the lectures will help..." He's totally the opposite of Jack.
Hmm, in the light of this, maybe I can answer my own question? That Jack is there, right amongst all the ghosts in the 1920 picture, indicates that nopw he, like them, is trapped in his own imagination? He has become one of his own characters? Interesting...
That's sort of the way I see it. He's been absorbed into the hotel, anyway--maybe he's been given a totally new character. I kind of like wondering who that character is, given the picture. He seems to be a guest at the party, and he's right in the front, so maybe he's a sort of cruel, heavy-drinking party guy or something.
Btw, have you seen this? (http://www.ps260.com/molly/SHINING%20FINAL.mov) It's the first-place winner in a contest where you take a known movie and cut a new and very different trailer for it. It's hilarious, but takes a while to download.
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Hee--yes, there's a throwaway line that it's built on an Indian Burial Ground maybe according to the manager-I don't think that's true in the book. I think there's a big involved theory online that suggests that the whole movie is supposed to be about the genocide of Native Americans, as the hotel decorations are also Native designs. Personally I think it's just a little throwaway idea that could or could not be significant--maybe it wasn't even really a burial ground but just a place the Indians respected because bad things already happened there. But building anything on an Indian Burial ground is just shorthand in America for the house being haunted, so I like that inclusion. (I love that South Park where Kyle buys his fish at the Ancient Indian Burial Ground Pet Shop--I wonder exactly when that whole idea got started. Did pioneers tell stories about people building log cabins on Indian Burial Grounds and them being haunted?)
As for the picture at the end, I definitely don't think it's that Jack was reincarnated or anything like that. I read it sort of like in The Haunting of Hill House when the house seems to be telling Eleanor to "come home" and stay there. Jack feels at home at the Overlook because he's vulnerable to it, and in the end he's absorbed into it as if he's "always been here." I assume the same thing happened to Grady, who now seems to have a place there in the past. Perhaps Lloyd was some Mafia guy who got whacked there and now he's the bartender. It could have been a silly ending but I think it really works because of the way the hotel works.
If someone who is not (heh, like me, and obviously Jack), I think that sceneario works in the exact opposite way, the endless time becomes a hinder, because you no longer have any kind of deadlines to beat, no limited amount of time in which you must write, if you're going to get it down, and also, you get no outside influences or impulses, which in itself can kill the creativity.
Hee! Yes--it's such the classic fantasy "if I had time, I would write a lot." But of course very few writers have the luxury of being able to devote their whole day to writing. The mostly learn by just making themselves write around their job and family. The one thing you need as a freelancer is self-discipline.
This doesn't really matter, but the "got any ideas" question could just as well be "got any ideas of how you will continue from where you are now?", can't it? He could be stuck someplace in his story.
I hadn't thought of that but you're right--she could be asking about how he's going to solve some problem. It's just that you'd think we'd know something about it that way. Also it's hard to imagine Jack really telling Wendy about a problem he was having. It's funny because again, in The Changeling there's a similar thing where he's taken a job doing a series of lectures in theory at a university, too, and his friend says, "Have you done any writing?" And he says something like, "Still working on that third movement. Same old problem. Well, maybe the lectures will help..." He's totally the opposite of Jack.
Hmm, in the light of this, maybe I can answer my own question? That Jack is there, right amongst all the ghosts in the 1920 picture, indicates that nopw he, like them, is trapped in his own imagination? He has become one of his own characters? Interesting...
That's sort of the way I see it. He's been absorbed into the hotel, anyway--maybe he's been given a totally new character. I kind of like wondering who that character is, given the picture. He seems to be a guest at the party, and he's right in the front, so maybe he's a sort of cruel, heavy-drinking party guy or something.
Btw, have you seen this? (http://www.ps260.com/molly/SHINING%20FINAL.mov) It's the first-place winner in a contest where you take a known movie and cut a new and very different trailer for it. It's hilarious, but takes a while to download.