I was forced to study and analyze The Shining movie by Stanley Kubrick as if it were a type of Bible in my film class, but I’ve never had the chance to read the book. So, I decided to take this opportunity to finally read it.
Here follows a list of things that, off the top of my head, are different between the movie and book.
- In the book, we know what Jack did to Danny in the past: he broke his arm while drunk.
- A large part of the story is that Jack got the opportunity to be the Overlook’s caretaker thanks to a friend named Al Shockley. Both were drunkards and both started to go sober when they hit a bike with their car. They never found the person who was riding the bike and wonder if they killed someone. The guilt drives them to sobriety. Notably, the reason he goes sober is not necessarily because he broke Danny’s arm – in fact, I think he breaks Danny’s arm when he’s sober, but I could be misremembering.
- He was writing a play, not a novel.
- He was a teacher and supervised the speech and debate team, but he got fired because he beat up a student. This is why he really needs the job from Al Shockley.
- Jack becomes OBSESSED with the people who used to work at the Overlook, uncovering their dark past. He decides he no longer wants to write a play, but write about this dark past and reveal Stuart Ullman to be a ‘pompous rich man’. He says this to Ullman, and as a result, Al has to decide whether or not to let him write it (because something I forgot). Al decides not to let him write it, which pisses Jack off and adds to his insanity.
- The Overlook being a real, living thing that is trying to drive everyone insane is something I’ve seen in a lot of The Shining analyses for the movie, but in the book, that’s just a fact.
- There are hedge animals outside the Overlook that come to life. One is a tiger that almost pounces on Danny. Probably my favorite scene in the novel because of how well-written it is and how well it managed to terrify me.
- Wendy is blonde instead of having black hair.
4 Comments
I didn’t realize the movie differs from the book as much as it does, I will definitely need to give it a read now. Focusing a little more on Jack’s alcoholism in the movie would have been interesting, I think.
It’s been a long time since I watched the shining but reading this makes me want to watch it again and then go read the book. It’s always been so interesting to me how words on a page can frighten us considering that fear is such a primal and material emotion/instinct.
This is a good breakdown of the key differences between The Shining novel and Kubrick’s adaptation, and it really highlights how distinct the two versions are, character development, and even thematic focus. It’s wild how a single source material can produce two drastically different experiences.
Follow-up to Clara–it surprises me that you are surprised about the power of “words on a page” to convey emotion (remember what Ong says about orality, which is where scary stories come from….) Katelyn, which version was scarier? are they comparable?