The Shining: Chapter 44 Summary & Analysis

Jack is dancing with a beautiful woman. He doesn’t know how long he has been drinking inside the Colorado Lounge. Time doesn’t matter anymore. Jack remembers talking to a comic from television’s infancy, and he saw men crossing the lobby in formal dress from the early 1900s. Japanese lanterns are strung everywhere, and the only sober part of Jack’s brain tries to tell him that it is 6:00 a.m. on a morning in December, but time is “canceled.” 

A poem pops into Jack’s head: “The arguments against insanity fall through with a soft shurring sound / layer on layer…” Jack can’t remember the poet, but it is something he read in his undergraduate. He laughs. The woman he is dancing with asks what is so funny. The band is playing some postwar music, but Jack doesn’t know which war. The woman is wearing a cat’s-eye mask, and she invites Jack up to her room. Over her shoulder, Jack can see Derwent, and a man dressed in a dog costume, Roger, is following him on all fours, obviously drunk and barking.

The band’s number ends, and the woman excuses herself. Jack nearly falls over a drink cart moving by. He apologizes, and the man pushing the cart asks if Jack would like a drink. Yes, he says, a martini. Jack asks the man what his name is, and he answers Grady. Jack asks if he is the caretaker, but Grady is confused. Jack is the caretaker, Grady says. He has always been the caretaker. At least since Grady was hired. The manager hired him the same day as Jack, Grady says, and he asks Jack if he remembers.

Jack mentions Ullman, but Grady corrects him. Not Ullman. The hotel. Grady suggests that Jack ask Danny about the hotel. Danny understands the hotel, even though he has been holding out on Jack. Grady says that Danny needs to be “corrected.” The boy “needs a good talking-to, and perhaps a bit more,” Grady continues. Grady says his own daughters didn’t like the hotel at first either, and they even tried to set it on fire, but Grady “corrected them.” When his wife resisted, he “corrected her,” too. Jack will have to do the same with Danny and Wendy.

Grady tells Jack that if he disciplines Danny, Wendy will fall in line. Jack asks why Wendy and Danny can’t just leave. After all, it is Jack the hotel wants, not Danny or Wendy. As Jack speaks, Derwent yells at Roger for peeing on the floor and the room erupts in laughter. Grady tells Jack that Danny has been calling out to Hallorann, calling him to the hotel to interrupt their plans. He further tells Jack that the scrapbook was left behind for Jack by the manager, who thinks Jack has a future with the hotel’s top management.

However, Grady says, how far Jack goes in the hotel depends on Danny. Jack can’t understand why. He makes his own choices, Jack says. Grady says that Jack must do something about Danny and Wendy. A man who can’t manage his wife and son cannot manage the hotel. Jack shouts at Grady, telling him that he will take care of them, and the entire room is silent. Grady tells Jack to follow him, and he leads Jack to the mantle, where the clock sits below the glass dome, the elephant statues situated on either side. It is one minute to midnight.

“Midnight!” Derwent shouts. “Unmask! Unmask!” The clock chimes and the crowd cheers. Two figures, a father and son, come to the front of the clock as Strauss’s waltz plays. The father holds a roque mallet and begins to strike the son repeatedly. The son falls, and blood splatters the inside of the glass dome. Jack doesn’t believe what he is seeing. Clocks can’t bleed, he says to himself. He looks around the ballroom. It is empty. He looks back to the clock, feeling drunk. It is only the clock under the dome and the elephants. No blood.  

Jack walks through the dining room, stumbles and falls, striking his nose. Bleeding, he goes to the Colorado Lounge. It is empty, too, but the shelves are full. Relieved, Jack goes to the bar and yells for Lloyd. Silence. He yells for Grady. Silence. Jack gets up, intending to get his own drink, and tries to jump behind the bar. He falls forward, striking his head. Jack passes out. Outside, the snow continues to fall. It is 8:30 a.m., MST.