The Hellish Boiler
The boiler heats the hotel. It is Jack’s job as caretaker to attend to the boiler, but he’s really not very good at it. After all, he is a writer. The climax of the novel is an apocalyptic explosion of the boiler, thus solidifying its symbol of hellish inattentiveness. The imagery throughout implicates the boiler in a way that can almost be said to personify it as a demonic creature of hell lurking beneath the Overlook:
“There was a giant hiss of steam, dragon’s breath. A warm tropical mist rose from beneath the boiler and veiled him. For a moment he could no longer see the dial but thought he must have waited too long; the groaning, clanking sound inside the boiler increased, followed by a series of heavy rattling sounds and the wrenching screech of metal.”
REDRUM
Redrum is murder spelled backwards. What is the opposite of murder? Rebirth. The spirits that haunt the Overlook are always there; they never leave. But—and this is an important but—while the Overlook Hotel exists in a state of perpetual haunting, it needs the caretaker to be energized and reinvigorated to avoid lapsing into a perpetually enervated state. Murder will take place, but before that can happen, REDRUM must occur: the rebirth of the state of evil under the attentive eye of its caretaker. Thus, the more than thirty occurrences of the word “REDRUM” becomes imagery that promises both birth and death; both existing and possible only in a gruesome state of play.
Of Manhood and Liquor
Grady has some tough words for Jack as he sits inside the food locker at his lowest point. Grady, according to the officious little…Ullman…was an unfortunate hire; a caretaker who only succeeded in taking care of his family with extreme prejudice. Grady is rather an officious little…ghost…himself, urging Jack’s murderous rage on through a silky sort of elevated prose, suggesting that he and the other spirits have come to “believe that your heart is not in this, sir. That you haven’t the… the belly for it.” It is significant that Grady comes to Jack when he is quite literally at his weakest because the spectral denizens of the Overlook Hotel recognize the weakness of a drunk when they see it. For Jack, his masculinity is like alcohol; a weapon to be exploited:
“His head ached terribly, the sick throb of a hangover. The attendant symptoms were there, too: his mouth tasted like a manure rake had taken a swing through it, his ears rung, his heart had an extra-heavy, thudding beat, like a tom-tom. In addition, both shoulders ached fiercely from throwing himself against the door and his throat felt raw and peeled from useless shouting. He had cut his right hand on the doorlatch.”
The Overlook
Much more precisely and explicitly than in the film, the haunted nature of the Overlook Hotel in King’s literary hands is intimately connected to reality. What Kubrick only hints at through obscure suggestion, the author makes unambiguous. Imagery is engaged early on to paint a portrait of a natural environment which over time transubstantiates into the supernatural:
“Any big hotels have got scandals…Just like every big hotel has got a ghost. Why? Hell, people come and go. Sometimes one of ‘em will pop off in his room, heart attack or stroke or something like that. Hotels are superstitious places. No thirteenth floor or room thirteen, no mirrors on the back of the door you come in through, stuff like that. Why, we lost a lady just this last July.”
