My Theory On THE SHINING

The Shining has always been my favourite Stephen King book and the movie starring Jack Nicholson has always been one of my favourite movies, but the ending as always been a mystery.

Everybody has a different theory about why Jack Torrance appears in the picture from 1921 when clearly he died in the hedge maze. I don’t think there is a right or wrong answer, but there is an indication in the movie that tells us that he’s been at the hotel for almost 60 years, maybe even longer.

When the hotel starts to get into Jack’s head, he meets Delbert Grady who claims that he’s always been the caretaker, when Delbert himself has always been the butler. There’s been talk about who Grady is. When Jack went for the initial interview for the caretaker job, the hotel manager said that there was a man named Charles Grady who was the caretaker in the 1970’s. He developed cabin fever and killed his family then himself and because Grady is the name of the butler that Jack meets, there’s must be a connection to the two, maybe a relative or maybe they’re the same person. So maybe Jack has a connection to the man in the picture.

One theory I found was the people in the picture were former caretakers and/or people who were killed at some point in the hotel and their spirits are in the picture. I think that’s why Jack is in the middle because he’s the more recent death, but that doesn’t answer the part of how he was the caretaker all along. Was there a part in the history of the Overlook where Jack was once the caretaker, but he just doesn’t remember and he came back as someone else to re-live that one moment? Do you think as viewers we saw the face of the original caretaker from 1921, but his wife and son saw a completely different man?

There are so many different explanations about the ending. We could discuss our opinions for hours and never really understand the movie completely. We can come to our own conclusions, but we may never fully get the actual meaning of why Jack Torrance appears in the picture.