The Shining:Adaptation from Book to Film - Essay Example

Between the book and the film, changes were made so that the movie no longer held the essence of the novel, while still managing to create terrifying sequences that led to a source of cinematic history. The basic nature of the main character in the novel is determined by the horrible act of breaking his son’s arm through the influence of alcohol. He is plagued by this one terrible act that has led to sobriety and an inner conflict that rages over the act in comparison to his true identity as a person.

Jack is not a violent man, but with the alcohol he created a terrible moment that has brought distrust and disconnection between himself and his wife and son. According to Spignesi, “King tackled his own personal feelings regarding occasional anger towards his children and he used the writing of the novel as a means to try and understand those inexplicable outbursts of rage we all have felt towards our children” (24). King’s intent in creating this character was to acknowledge the struggle that parents have with some of the terrible things that can occur during parenthood despite every effort to remain a good parent.

Jack Torrance was suppose to represent a good man who is influenced into doing terrible things. However, when Kubrick takes on the challenge of the movie, he changes the dynamic of the family. Instead of Wendy being a strong women dealing with a family crisis, she becomes the image of an emotionally battered woman who lives in fear of what the next moment will bring from her husband. When the actress Shelly Duvall was suffering from stress and illnesses on set “Kubrick kept telling the actress that the attention wasn’t helping her to capture the frenzied nature of a harassed wife like Wendy Torrance” (Lobrutto 442).

As Jack Nicholas portrays Jack Torrance, instead of the decent man who succumbs to influences of alcohol and then ghostly persuasion, the character becomes a classic