Why Jack Is In The Photo

Summary

• The Shining film differs greatly from the novel, with Kubrick making significant changes to the story and adding elements to the ending that weren’t present in the book.
• The ending of The Shining, particularly the photo of Jack in the 1921 ballroom, suggests that Jack is a reincarnation of a former hotel employee, although this explanation is not explicitly stated in the film.
• The Shining explores themes of cyclical violence and abuse, and Kubrick’s film is full of metaphors and symbolism that have led to countless interpretations of its true meaning, including theories about sexual abuse and the ghosts being representations of violence and abuse.

Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is regarded by many as one of the greatest movies ever made, and to this day continues to be the subject of debate — especially when it comes to The Shining ending explained, and why Jack is in the infamous photo of the guests at The Overlook. Based on the book of the same name by Stephen King, The Shining follows Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), an aspiring writer and recovering alcoholic who takes a job as the off-season caretaker of the Overlook Hotel. Jack takes his wife, Wendy (Shelley Duvall), and their son, Danny (Danny Lloyd), with him, but little do they know, the Overlook has some dark secrets of its own. Triggered by Danny’s psychic abilities, the hotel releases some dangerous supernatural forces that break Jack’s sanity — and the safety of Wendy and Danny.

The Shining film is very different from the novel — so much so that Stephen King has said he hates The Shining many times. It’s understandable: Kubrick asked for the freedom to change whatever he wanted and exercised that freedom fully. Although King didn’t oppose that at the time, he wasn’t expecting Kubrick to go as far as to change the essence of the book and add elements to the ending that weren’t present in the novel. The Shining book and movie are very different entities, and details that are explained — or at least easier to interpret — in the novel are either not included or left very ambiguous in the film. Kubrick deliberately didn’t explain The Shining‘s ending during the film, but he did later explain why Jack Torrance appears in The Shining picture at the end.

Why Jack Torrance Is In The Photo At The End Of The Shining

Kubrick Suggests Jack Is A Reincarnation Of An Earlier Employee

Perhaps the most challenging part of The Shining‘s ending to explain is the final shot: a 1921 photograph showing Jack with other guests in the hotel’s ballroom. This scene has been interpreted in many ways, and one of the most popular explanations is that it represents the hotel “absorbing” Jack’s soul. Although this makes sense, Kubrick himself has said the photo actually suggests Jack being a reincarnation of an earlier official at the hotel.

The reincarnated Jack explanation makes sense when going back to his conversation with Grady in the bathroom, where the butler tells Jack that he has “always been the caretaker.” This explanation for The Shining ending also fits with the role of both Grady characters mentioned in the film: the past caretaker and the ghost. The ghost is Delbert Grady, and the past caretaker was Charles Grady. Jack says he saw Delbert in the newspaper, and thus he is the reincarnation of Charles Grady.

While the explanation that Jack is in the photo at the end of The Shining because he’s a reincarnated former employee makes sense, this isn’t explained in the movie itself. It’s also not immediately obvious when rewatching with that knowledge (unlike, say, The Sixth Sense, where rewatching with the knowledge that Bruce Willis’s character is also dead completely changes the viewing experience). Kubrick’s explanation for Jack Torrance’s appearance in the 1921 ballroom photo may be plausible, but it’s also one of the few weaker elements of The Shining, as such a significant plot element could have been both further elaborated on and made more apparent.

The Shining is available to stream on Paramount+.

How Wendy & Danny Escape The Overlook

They Flee On A Snowcat, & A Deleted Scene Shows Their Recovery

After being freed from the kitchen pantry by Grady’s ghost, Jack (whose sanity was already shattered by that point) goes after Wendy and Danny, ax in hand. Wendy and Danny lock themselves in the bathroom, and Wendy sends Danny through the window. Unable to pass through that same window, Wendy is trapped when Jack arrives and breaks through the door with the ax — the famous “Here’s Johnny!” scene. Wendy defends herself with a knife and slashes Jack’s arm, causing him to retreat. The Overlook’s cook, Dick Hallorann, arrives to help Wendy and Danny after the latter reaches out to him through “the shining,” but is ambushed and killed by Jack.

Jack then goes after Danny, who runs into the hedge maze — all this during a snowstorm. Meanwhile, Wendy runs through the hotel looking for her son. In the hedge maze, Danny manages to escape by laying a false trail to mislead Jack. Wendy and Danny reunite and leave the hotel in a Snowcat, and Jack freezes to death. What happens to Wendy and Danny after that is unknown (in the film, at least), although a deleted scene features them in a hospital, recovering both physically and mentally from everything they went through by the time The Shining ended.

How The Shining Movie’s Ending Differs From The Book

Jack’s Death And The Escape Are Both Very Different

As mentioned above, the film ends with Wendy and Danny escaping during a snowstorm thanks to the Snowcat Hallorann arrived in. Jack is left in the snow and freezes to death, and it’s implied that the Overlook Hotel continues with its cycle of murder by bringing in more reincarnations of past workers. The Shining novel, however, has a very different ending, and one that even made way for the sequel Doctor Sleep.

In the novel, Jack manages to fight the hotel’s possession long enough for him to tell Danny to run for his life. Unlike the film, Hallorann in The Shining book doesn’t die and helps Wendy and Danny escape at the end. The hotel makes one last attempt to possess Hallorann, but he successfully manages to avoid it. As for Jack, he does die, but not in the snow: a malfunctioning boiler explodes and kills Jack while also destroying the hotel.

The novel ends with Danny and Wendy spending the summer at a resort in Maine where Hallorann works as head chef. The three remain close, and Hallorann comforts Danny over the loss of his father and teaches him to fish. Interestingly, in the 1997 Shining miniseries, which King himself wrote, there’s a brief epilogue in which a graduating Danny is visited by the ghost of Jack, beaming with pride, suggesting that Jack’s spirit was fully freed when the Overlook blew up.

The meaning and topics addressed in the novel are very different from those in The Shining movie Stephen King hates so much, given Kubrick’s many changes to the story to fit his vision. The Shining novel and film work best as separate pieces, with each ending having a different meaning. The aforementioned sequel, Doctor Sleep, got a cinematic adaptation that serves as both a sequel to The Shining novel and Kubrick’s film, in a way.

RELATED: The Shining’s Best Quotes

Redrum & The Elevator Blood Explained

Visions And Warnings For Danny

In The Shining, Danny and Hallorann are the two characters with “shining” abilities, which allow them to communicate with each other even when miles apart. Danny’s “shine” reaches its peak at the Overlook Hotel, which mixed with the hotel’s spirits and own evil, unleashes some real horrors. Danny has visions of the hotel right after Jack gets the job and during his time at the hotel, and has a traumatizing experience when drawn into the “forbidden” room 237.

When the hotel’s forces get hold of Jack, Danny starts chanting and drawing the word “REDRUM,” which Wendy later sees reversed in the mirror, revealing the word “MURDER.” Danny was warned by the Grady twins that something terrible was going to happen, and “REDRUM” was the warning passed on to Danny and Wendy through Danny.

One of the most memorable scenes from The Shining is the blood coming out from the elevator. This is one of the film’s unique scenes (along with the Grady twins) and there are a number of ways to explain The Shining‘s elevator scene. As mentioned, Kubrick left many details open to interpretation, whether for viewers to come up with their own explanations or just to mess with them.

The elevator blood scene first appears as a vision to Danny, and materializes near the end of the film when Wendy is looking for him. Because the movie’s Overlook Hotel was built on an “Indian burial ground”, the blood coming out from the elevator has been interpreted as that of the Indigenous people buried there. Others believe it’s the blood of all the lives claimed by the forces of the hotel, which might be the most convincing explanation.

The Shining’s Real Meaning

Cyclical Violence And Abuse Are The Heart of The Movie

Kubrick may not have been fully faithful to the source material when adapting Stephen King’s book, but he succeeded in making a film full of metaphors and symbolism that have made way for countless interpretations of its true meaning. Of course, there are some more convincing (and coherent) than others, but The Shining is explained as, at its core, a story about violence and abuse and how these are often cyclical. Jack had a history of anger issues and violence, mainly against his family. When Wendy finds Danny after he enters room 237, he’s in shock and physically injured, and Wendy immediately blames Jack for it as he has hurt their son before.

Jack is a recovering alcoholic and relapses at the hotel. He might have had his anger under control for a while before taking the job, but he went back to it there. The Shining‘s Overlook Hotel itself also has a history of cyclical violence: it was built over a Native American burial ground, and its existence is a testament to the violence of colonization. Charles Grady killed his family with an ax, and Jack was on track to replicate that. The abuse part of the story is both physical and psychological: both Wendy and Danny are clearly scared of Jack, even before the hotel’s influence takes control of him, and yet they stay with him.

A popular theory, and one that has gone very deep into the symbolism of The Shining, says that the film also addresses sexual abuse. The scene with the man in the dog costume and the man in a tuxedo is the one used to support this theory, which says the dog represents young Danny Torrance (who earlier in the film is shown to have a plush toy) and the man in the tuxedo represents Jack. Tony, Danny’s imaginary friend, is believed by some to be Danny’s way to cope with the trauma of sexual abuse from his father.

The dog/sexual abuse interpretation hasn’t been confirmed by those involved in the film, so it’s up to each viewer if they accept it or not. Either way, The Shining is not so much a ghost story in a literal sense, but a story about the “ghosts” (or “demons,” in some cases) of violence and abuse, and how these can come back to continue with the cycle. Even when looked at more literally, The Shining‘s meaning is still up for debate, as some fans disagree on whether the ghosts in The Shining are even real. Of course, the ghost of Grady freeing Jack from the freezer remains hard to explain, although that doesn’t stop some from trying.

What The Shining Producer And Screenwriter Say About The Ending

The Photograph Was Always Part of the Ending

Funnily enough, director Stanley Kubrick had a couple of different endings in mind for The Shining, each of them very different. Kubrick was never into the idea of making a typical horror film, and he certainly got what he wanted out of the film, even if Stephen King didn’t like it. In an interview (via EW), executive producer Jan Harlan and screenwriter Diane Johnson both expand on the final scenes of The Shining, including The Shining picture at the end. Diane Johnson said this of Stanley Kubrick’s non-horror vision:

“The ending was changed almost entirely because Kubrick found it a cliché to just blow everything up. He thought there might be something else that would be metaphorically and visually more interesting.”

Despite all the changes Stanley Kubrick made to the ending, one of the director’s visions remained in place throughout all of it: The Shining picture at the end. In the same interview, the screenwriter says:

The photograph was always in the ending. The maze chase grew out of the topiary animal hedges that move around in the book. Kubrick thought topiary animals might be too goofy and cute, but he always liked the idea of a maze.

The maze in The Shining went over better than the hedge animals would’ve in Kubrick’s vision. It’s certainly an impactful moment that brings the movie full circle, seeing Jack become a part of the famous Overlook hotel ghosts once and for all. While it may not work for Stephen King, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining ending can be explained as perfectly fitting the film he created.

What Happened After The Shining Ended

Doctor Sleep Continues The Story

Thanks to the existence of 2019’s Doctor Sleep, there are now canon details of what happened to Danny, Wendy, and The Overlook Hotel after The Shining ending. Firstly, it’s clear that the end of The Shining wasn’t the end of the troubles at The Overlook. Danny (who goes by the name Dan as an adult) is plagued by hauntings from the spirits of The Overlook for the rest of his life, with Doctor Sleep focusing on his attempts to capture them and put an end to his torment. Dan doesn’t live anywhere near The Overlook, which shows that the power within is far greater than even The Shining hints.

It’s also revealed in Doctor Sleep that The Overlook was abandoned after the events of The Shining. However, this is another change from the original Stephen King narrative, in which The Overlook was destroyed at the end of The Shining novel when the boiler exploded. As for what happened to Wendy Torrance after The Shining, Doctor Sleep reveals that she passed away from lung cancer in 1999, age 53 when Danny/Dan was 20. This is only alluded to in the Doctor Sleep movie, but the book version gives a few more details about her life after The Shining ended.

Following the ending of The Shining, Wendy and Danny move to Florida after receiving a settlement from The Overlook’s board of directors. In the book, she looks after Danny for the remainder of his childhood and maintains contact with Dick Halloran. Halloran helps Wendy understand and manage Danny’s troubles at the hands of the spirits of The Overlook. Her death, combined with being haunted, drives Danny to alcohol abuse.

Doctor Sleep is not currently available to stream.

What Doctor Sleep Revealed About Jack’s Fate

Jack’s Soul Becomes Part Of The Hotel

The sequel to The Shining, 2019’s Doctor Sleep movie managed to walk a delicate tightrope between adapting King’s Shining sequel book and being a follow-up to Kubrick’s Shining movie. Directed by modern horror master Mike Flanagan, Doctor Sleep offered an unexpected treat in the form of an extended cameo by none other than Jack Torrance himself, now played by Henry Thomas. This appearance doesn’t clear up the question about why Jack is seen in the 1921 photo at the Overlook, but it does suggest that the theory about his soul being somehow absorbed by the haunted hotel is true.

In Doctor Sleep, adult Danny Torrance is forced to head to the Overlook to unleash a greater evil on villain Rose the Hat, but while there encounters the ghost of his father. Yet, this isn’t Jack — it’s Lloyd the bartender, albeit not the same Lloyd that Jack Torrence encountered. Some believe this suggests Lloyd the bartender was never a real person, and instead just a role the Overlook assigns to one of the souls it owns. While Danny’s barbs do eventually seem to wake up part of Jack’s consciousness from inside his Lloyd identity, whatever good he had left in him was clearly erased once Jack was fully taken over.

The Real Hotel Stephen King Visited That Inspired The Overlook

There Is A Real Haunted Hotel In Colorado

One of the most chilling details about both the novel and film versions of The Shining is that the Overlook Hotel is based on a real (possibly haunted) location that Stephen King once visited. The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado made a strong impression on King thanks to its long, eerily empty corridors during his stay right before the hotel closed for the winter. What’s more, while staying at the Stanley Hotel, King reports having caught glimpses of a young boy roaming the halls even though he and his wife were the only registered guests at the time.

The Stanley Hotel is still open to guests, and even hosts seances – embracing its haunted reputation.

Like The Shining‘s Overlook Hotel, the Stanley Hotel also has a haunted history, even possessing a particularly haunted room (number 217) just like the Overlook’s room 237. For all the supernatural twists and turns in The Shining‘s ending and story, knowing that it’s based on a real location makes the film (and its difficult-to-explain ending) all the creepier.

• 

  The Shining

  Summary:

  Recovering alcoholic and aspiring writer Jack Torrance heads to the remote Overlook Hotel after being hired to take care of it for the winter. Along for the trip are his son Danny and wife Wendy. Danny possesses a special psychic gift known as The Shining, which allows him to see the Overlook’s many malevolent ghosts. Before too long, the ghosts drive Jack to madness, leading him to grab an axe and target his loved ones. Based on Stephen King’s novel.

  Release Date:

  1980-06-13

  Assistant Director :

  Michael Stevenson, Terry Needham, Brian W. Cook

  Budget:

  $19 Million

  Cast:

  Danny Lloyd, Shelley Duvall, Jack Nicholson, Scatman Crothers

  Cinematographer:

  John Alcott

  Director:

  Stanley Kubrick

  Distributor :

  Warner Bros.

  Genres:

  Horror, Drama

  Producer:

  Stanley Kubrick

  Production Company:

  Warner Bros., Peregrine, Hawk Films, Producers Circle

  Rating:

  R

  Runtime:

  146 minutes

  Writers:

  Diane Johnson, Stanley Kubrick