Precognition, Second Sight, and the Shining Theme Analysis

Stephen King’s The Shining revolves around Danny Torrance and his physic abilities. Danny can read the minds of others, and he has visions of the future brought to him by his imaginary friend, Tony. Danny was “born with a caul”—a thin membrane covering the face and eyes at birth that is often associated with “second sight” and other physic gifts—and this is how Danny’s mother, Wendy, explains her son’s rather unsettling abilities. When Danny meets Dick Hallorann, the cook at the Overlook Hotel where Danny’s father, Jack, is the winter caretaker, Danny finally has a name for his abilities. “I call it shinin on,” Hallorann tells Danny, “the Bible calls it having visions, and there’s scientists that call it precognition. I’ve read up on it, son. I’ve studied on it. They all mean seeing the future.” Hallorann can shine, too, and while he has never met anyone with a shine as strong as Danny’s, he knows that there are others as well. Through The Shining, King argues that ordinary people have powers—in the form of intuition and empathy—that go beyond basic human understanding and that people should pay more attention to such powers—even if, in the real world, those powers aren’t as extreme as Danny’s.

Danny’s ability to shine is well-established in the novel, which, in addition to Hallorann’s definition of “seeing the future,” also involves telepathy and an ability to see the past. After Danny and his family relocate from Vermont to Colorado, a trunk containing Jack’s important papers is misplaced in the move. Jack fears the trunk was left behind, but Danny tells him that the trunk is under the basement stairs in their new Colorado apartment building. Danny has never been in the basement, but he knows through visions from Tony that the trunk is under the stairs. Danny also knows that Wendy has a sister, Aileen, who died in an accident when Wendy was a young girl, even though Wendy has never told Danny about her. Furthermore, Danny knows that his parents are contemplating divorce, despite the fact that neither Wendy nor Jack have ever spoken the word out loud. For Danny, shining means that he can read people’s minds and know their innermost thoughts—essentially, he is able to intuit their problems and empathize with them on an extraordinary level. After the Overlook Hotel is closed for the winter—leaving Danny and his family alone in the isolated and snowy Colorado Mountains—Jack, influenced by the evil of the haunted hotel and his own worsening insanity, attempts to kill both Danny and Wendy. Danny calls for Hallorann’s help via telepathy and sends a message from his own mind in Colorado to Hallorann’s mind in Florida, which again suggests that Danny’s ability to shine goes well beyond simple precognition.

Danny and Hallorann, however, are not the only characters in the novel who have the ability to shine. Several characters, including both Wendy and Jack, exhibit precognitive abilities as well, which implies that shining isn’t as rare as one would think. Hallorann tells Danny about Delores Vickery, a former maid at the Overlook Hotel, who also “had a little shine to her.” Delores spent most of her time hiding in the linen closet, smoking cigarettes and reading; however, she always sensed when Mr. Ullman, the hotel manager, was doing his rounds and managed to look busy. Although Delores didn’t know it, it was her ability to shine that allowed her to fool Ullman. After Hallorann receives Danny’s telepathic message and heads back to the Overlook Hotel, he goes off an icy road and buries his car in the snow. A plow driver, Howard Cottrell, stops to help and immediately believes Hallorann when he says people are in trouble at the Overlook Hotel, even though the phones are out and there is no way for Hallorann to know such information. “Sometimes I get feelins,” Howard says to Hallorann. Like Delores, it is Howard’s ability to shine that tells him Hallorann is sincere. As Wendy and Danny hide from Jack’s murderous rage, “vague thoughts of fire” pass through Wendy’s mind. At the climax of the novel, the hotel’s boiler explodes, killing Jack and destroying the hotel, and Wendy seems to sense this before it happens. Hallorann says that all mothers can shine, and Wendy’s intuition is no exception to this rule. Even Jack seems to shine, and as the evil Overlook Hotel comes alive around him, he can hear it talking. Jack can’t explain exactly how he hears the hotel, but he says it is similar to Danny’s abilities. “[L]ike father, like son,” Jack says, hinting at his own ability to shine. Given that all of these characters also have some form of the shining, King suggests that ordinary people often have extraordinary abilities that can’t necessarily be explained, but should be recognized and understood, nonetheless.

According to Hallorann, “a lot of folks, they got a little bit of shine to them. They don’t even know it,” and this appears to be one of King’s overreaching arguments. While most don’t have the abilities of Danny or Hallorann, King ultimately suggests that through such powers as intuition and empathy, most people have some form of the shining.