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Chapter 23
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Shining, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Fear, the Paranormal, and Reality
Precognition, Second Sight, and the Shining
Family
Isolation and Insanity
Alcoholism and Abuse
Time
Summary
Analysis
At dusk, Jack, Wendy, and Danny stand on the porch of the Overlook Hotel and watch the snow fall around them. The snow started not long after Wendy and Danny returned from Sidewinder, and it has snowed ever since. The driveway is completely covered, and they watched as the highway disappeared in the distance. The Torrances each feel secretly relieved that the decision to stay at the hotel has been taken out of their hands with the snow. Jack has been acting strange all evening, but standing on the porch, he seems to get a little better. The three of them go inside the hotel and go about their nightly routines, “like microbes trapped in the intestine of a monster.”
Part of Jack’s strange behavior may be due to the fact that he’s sensed Wendy has been considering leaving the hotel. Jack feels better standing on the porch in the snowstorm because he knows Wendy and Danny will be unable to leave now that the roads will be blocked. King frequently uses the word “monster” to describe the hotel and what it does to people, like Tony’s warning that the “inhuman place makes human monsters.”
Themes
