The Shining: Chapter 35 Summary & Analysis

Danny tells Jack and Wendy all about the topiaries, but he doesn’t tell them about the cement ring. He isn’t exactly sure how to explain it, anyway. Jack builds a big fire in the fireplace, and Danny sits sipping hot soup from a mug. As Danny finishes telling his story, he worries again about men in white jackets. Jack stands at one of the lobby’s large windows and tells Danny to stand next to him. Danny looks out the window, and Jack asks what he sees. Only his own tracks, Danny says. Exactly, confirms Jack. Nothing happened out there; it was all just one of Danny’s trances.

Wendy objects to Jack’s questioning of Danny, but Jack says he is only helping Danny distinguish reality from hallucination. Jack insists that Danny cut his leg on the crust of the snow or the porch. Danny starts to say that even Jack had an experience with the animal topiaries, but Jack slaps him, cutting Danny off midsentence. Wendy screams at Jack, and grabs Danny’s arm. Wendy and Jack pull Danny back and forth until he screams for them to stop. A pine knot explodes in the fireplace, sounding like a gunshot.

Later, as Wendy and Jack tuck Danny into bed, Wendy apologizes to Jack. But, she says, Jack should not have hit Danny and promised that he never would again. She says that when the ranger comes, they are all going down the mountain, and Jack agrees. He hopes that Wendy will ask about the animal topiaries, so that he can tell her everything—the animal hedges, the ghost of room 217, the firehose—but she doesn’t ask.