"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy."
Jack's central goal throughout The Shining is to obtain the time and space to become a successful writer in order to escape the menial work to which he's been reduced. By typewriting away furiously, he leads Wendy to believe that he is writing a thick novel. However, when she inspects the pages he's written, it contains only the words "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" repeated numerous times. Whereas Jack presents himself as an ambitious man being held back by his family, he must eventually confront his own intrinsic inability to write the great American novel. This quotation provides the realization around which the final action of the film turns, as it reveals that Jack has been driven mad by his own inability to "work." Consequently, he decides to "play" in such a way that it perverts the child's play we see Danny engage in throughout the film.
"I'm sorry to differ with you sir, but you are the caretaker. You've always been the caretaker. I should know sir. I've always been here."
One of the central questions in The Shining is whether Jack goes mad or is possessed by the evil spirits of the Overlook Hotel. However, when Jack asks Delbert Grady if he murdered his wife and children while working as the hotel's caretaker, Grady insists that Jack has been the caretaker as long as he can remember. This is one of the earliest hints that Jack is somehow a part of the hotel's dark history. In the final shot of the film, this suspicion is confirmed by the picture hanging outside the Gold Room, which depicts Jack partying in the Gold Room at the July 4th Ball of 1921.
"When I came up here for my interview, it was as though I had been here before. We all have moments of déjà vu, but this was ridiculous. It was almost as though I knew what was going to be around every corner."
Whereas Wendy expresses an initial sense of intimidation when touring the Overlook, Jack says that he cannot help but feel as if he has been there before. This is the earliest instance of foreshadowing that Jack is part of the hotel's history of violence, which is later confirmed when Jack is depicted in a picture of one of the Overlook's parties in 1921. It is particularly Jack's mention of knowing what is "around every corner" that foreshadows Danny's repeated explorations of the hotel on his toy bicycle. In these sequences, the camera is firmly situated behind Danny's bike, and therefore turns the corners of the maze-like hotel in time with Danny, building suspense about what is around each corner. During one of these scenes, Danny turns the corner to find the Grady twins waiting there for him, resonating eerily with Jack's assertion that he has a sixth sense about what lurks around each of the hotel's corners, and throwing into question the relation between Jack's own foreknowledge, and the suspense built by the film.
"Have you ever thought, for a single solitary moment, about my responsibilities to my employers? Has it ever occurred to you that I have agreed to look after the Overlook Hotel until May the first. Does it matter to you at all that the owners have placed their complete confidence and trust in me, and that I have signed a letter of agreement, a contract, in which I have accepted that responsibility? Do you have the slightest idea what a moral and ethical principle is? Do you?"
When Wendy searches for Jack and instead finds his creepy, repetitive typescript, Jack surprises her and begins chasing her through the hotel lobby, ranting about her inability to sympathize with his responsibility to his employers. Jack's tirade plays as ironic, however, as he accuses Wendy of failing to understand what a "moral and ethical principle is" while he chases her with the intention to harm her. On a larger level, this monologue functions as the culmination of the resentment that Jack harbors towards Wendy throughout the film. This resentment can also been seen as a displacement of Jack's failed ambitions and delusions of grandeur, and the class tensions that run through the film.
"Well, you know, Doc, when something happens, it can leave a trace of itself behind. Say like, if someone burns toast. Well, maybe things that happen leave other kinds of traces behind. Not things that anyone can notice, but things that people who 'shine' can see, just like they can see things that haven't happened yet. Well, sometimes they can see things that happened a long time ago. I think a lot of things happened right here in this particular hotel over the years. And not all of them was good."
When Danny asks Dick Hallorann if something bad happened at the hotel, Dick explains that certain events leave a mark on the places where they happened. He uses a metaphor to explain it to Danny, comparing the way in which people have haunted the hotel to the way in which burnt toast leaves ash behind. As the film progresses, this metaphor gains traction, explaining the visions we have seen Danny experience even as we question their accuracy. Eventually, Danny's prophecies all come true and are verified by Wendy's final sprint through the hotel, in which the ghosts—formerly the stuff of Jack and Danny's subjectivity—become real.
"Women. Can't live with them. Can't live without them."
Embedded in The Shining's scathing deconstruction of the nuclear American family are similarly complex gender dynamics. As a housewife in the late 1970s, Wendy Torrance is part of a near-extinct species, vulnerable to cultural forces that would have her abandon her apron for a job. Often, Wendy actually appears as a more capable caretaker of the hotel than Jack, tinkering with the boilers and maintaining communication with the nearby ranger station while Jack struggles to write. Jack, however, fails to notice Wendy's industrious spirit, later accusing her of sabotaging his various jobs due to her inability to comprehend real responsibility. During Jack's discussions with Lloyd, he refers to Wendy as "the old sperm bank upstairs," building on the misogyny he demonstrates throughout the film as a result of his own insecurity about his ability to provide for his family. In this way, Jack's resentment towards Wendy, a housewife, is emblematic of a larger cultural critique of the nuclear family.
"Don't worry, mom. I know all about cannibalism. I saw it on TV."
Throughout The Shining, Danny's ability to "shine" forces him to witness some extremely traumatic images. From his vision of the murdered Grady twins to the elevator with blood pouring from it, Danny's visions—which he experiences with shocked, wide eyes—are surprisingly mature for a child of his age. This disruption of the innocence of youth is a theme that permeates the film's treatment of childhood and play. When Danny mentions to his parents that he learned about cannibalism on television, therefore, he supports the larger cultural criticism that a child should not witness graphic violence. TV is associated with impending danger in numerous sequences of the film; for example, Wendy and Danny watch the Road Runner lure Wile E. Coyote into deadly traps in one scene.
"White man's burden, Lloyd, my man. White man's burden."
The traumatic history of racism against minorities is a motif that appears numerous times in The Shining. When Jack mentions the "white man's burden" when drinking with Lloyd, he refers to the biological inability of Native Americans to consume alcohol, which should call to mind the fact that the Overlook Hotel is built on the site of a Native American burial ground, revealed by Mr. Ullman. Since Jack's alcoholism plays a role in his gradual descent into insanity, this "white man's burden" is truly a burden, as the haunted goings on of the hotel could be explained as revenge on the part of Native American spirits for white people's crimes against them, including the theft of land for commercial purposes. The film's theme of racism is not limited to that which applies to Native Americans, however. When Delbert Grady convinces Jack to kill his wife and son, he accuses Danny of inviting a "n***er cook" to complicate this plan.
"Here's Johnny!"
This reference to late-night television, specifically the Johnny Carson show, is in keeping with the film's motifs relating to popular culture and media. Throughout the film, Danny and Wendy watch cartoons, including Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner—in which one character constantly sets traps for another—as a means of escaping from the pressures and tensions of their formerly peaceful family life. Despite these escapist intentions, however, Danny sees and hears more than the average child can handle; even at the start of the film, Danny assures Jack that he knows what cannibalism is because he "saw it on TV." In this way, Jack's references to popular culture and TV as he chops down the doors of his hotel room fits into a larger commentary that the film makes on the loss of innocence that children in contemporary America suffer at the hands of television.
"This whole place is such an enormous maze, I feel I'll have to leave a trail of breadcrumbs every time I come in."
Built into the design of The Shining is an obsession with mazes and complex, nonsensical geometry. Of course, Wendy's comment as she explores the hotel's cavernous kitchen foreshadows the climax of the film, in which Danny escapes from Jack by trapping him in the hedge maze outside. But this comment also ties into a larger sense of disorientation that the characters suffer at the hands of the hotel's architecture. From Wendy's final chase through the hotel's various compartments to the pattern of the carpet on which Danny plays with his toys, the film's aesthetics create a sense of bewilderment. This sensation fits into larger themes of disruption as it relates to the family dynamic; just as Jack literally loses track of Danny in the maze, so too does he lose Danny emotionally as he descends into madness.
