The Shining (1977) has been calling to me lately, first as we considered the wintery horrors of “The Reach” and Storm of the Century, and then again as we explored the cursed hotel room in “1408.” So we’re going to follow in the footsteps of Castle Rock’s (2018-2019) Jackie Torrance (played by Jane Levy) and take a little road trip out of King’s Maine and head west to dig into the legacy of Jack Torrance and the literary geography of the Overlook Hotel for a while. 

As I reread The Shining with a particular focus on literary geography, an obvious first step seemed to be to map the Torrances’ cross-country road trip as they made their way from Stovington, Vermont to Boulder, Colorado and then, past Sidewinter to the Overlook Hotel. With this in mind, I found myself asking questions that had never occurred to me before, though I’ve read the novel several times: what must that incredibly long and tense drive have been like, particularly for Wendy and Danny? What was Jack’s mental state like? Was it a fresh start or a white-knuckle sobriety situation? Given what we know about their cash-strapped position, how did the Torrances afford such a journey? Did Al Shockley bankroll this ride into the sunset and if so, why? (There are some unsettling possibilities on that front). Where did they stop on the way out? Given that Jack and Wendy were both born and raised in New England, why did they set out for Colorado in the first place? Sure, there’s the job at the Overlook that Al Shockley sets up and Jack interviews for, but they’ve been living in Boulder for at least a little while before Jack has that interview, so what brought them there specifically and what have they been doing in the meantime? That seems like a really long way to go and an almost inconceivable gamble for a potential job prospect. Jack was fired in the late spring and he interviews for the Overlook Hotel’s winter caretaker position in the autumn, so what happened over that long and surely difficult summer? There’s a narrative gap here, an absence that despite having taught and written about The Shining multiple times, I didn’t fully sense the scope of until I turned my attention to rereading the novel through the lens of literary geography and mapping that journey. 

This isn’t the only untold story in The Shining, of course. We get clues to the vast scope of the Overlook’s hidden history through Jack’s time in the basement with the mysterious scrapbook and other archival artifacts, as well as in the blurring between past and present in the hotel as the winter wears on. There is also King’s “Before the Play,” a story written in five acts, originally published in the magazine Whispers in 1982, which provides five vignettes: four from the Overlook’s dark history and one from Jack Torrance’s troubled childhood. (An abridged version of “Before the Play” was published in the April 26, 1997 issue of TV Guide to coincide with King’s ABC miniseries version of The Shining, with cover art by horror great Bernie Wrightson). “Before the Play” tells stories of Bob T. Watson in 1922 (Act 1), a guest named Lottie Kilgallon at the Overlook on her honeymoon (Act 2), Horace Derwent on the night of the masquerade party (Act 3), and mafia hitmen sent to commit murder in the Presidential Suite in 1958 (Act 5); Act 4 is a story of childhood Jack Torrance and his abusive father. Though Jack—and we as readers—come to know the Overlook Hotel well over the course of that dark and violent winter, there are always more secrets, additional stories to be unearthed. 

As I continued to reread The Shining with literary geography in mind, I kept sensing the edges of other untold stories, other questions. While I wondered about how the Torrances took their journey from Vermont to Colorado and what that experience must have been like, the journey itself at least seemed relatively straightforward (go south out of New England, then head west) … until it wasn’t. 

When Jack goes to Boulder pharmacy to call Al Shockley from the pay phone there after getting the job at the Overlook, Danny rides along and waits for Jack in the car, happy to while away the time looking at the maps in the glove compartment: 

As Jack got out, Danny opened the bug’s glovebox and took out the five battered gas station maps: Colorado, Nebraska, Utah, Wyoming, and New Mexico. He loved road maps, loved to trace where the roads went with his finger. As far as he was concerned, new maps were the best part of moving west. (52)

And while a couple of these maps would make sense, their combination here is baffling. The Torrances would have likely passed through Nebraska and Wyoming if they were coming into Colorado from the north. If they came to Colorado from the south, they would have driven through New Mexico. I’m not certain how they would have ended up in Utah, unless they drove all the way around the state by either the north or south, before coming to Colorado from the opposite direction, and even if that were the case, I can’t figure out why they would do so. On a tight budget with an uncertain future, cruising around the American Southwest and the western states on a sightseeing pleasure trip doesn’t seem particularly likely. 

The maps are well and frequently used (hence their “battered” state), which would suggest some significant navigation rather than a straight shot through. Perhaps they had nowhere to land in Boulder just yet and were killing time, figuring being on the move was preferable to being grounded but homeless. Perhaps Jack and Wendy picked up odd jobs here and there along the way to make some money when they ran out of gas or cash for food, jumping back in the bug and heading on once they had enough money in their pockets to do so. If this is the case, what must that life have looked like for Danny? 

King doesn’t tell us of any previous road trip adventures, all of the Torrances’ “before” stories are set in New England, and Danny specifically notes the newness of the maps, so it doesn’t seem likely these are maps they already had in the glove compartment that just happened to come in handy or that led them back to somewhere they had been before. And why do the maps only start in Nebraska? What about everything east of Nebraska, between there and Vermont? Were they casting about aimlessly before then? Did they have maps but they lost them or threw them out? Given that there’s a glimmer of hope that they will one day return to Vermont (including Al Shockley’s shifty reassurances that he’s trying to Jack his job back at Stovington Prep), why would they throw the maps away? I just don’t know. 

Charting the Torrances’ path from Stovington, Vermont to the Overlook Hotel seemed pretty straightforward at the start, but this mapping process quickly became a rabbit hole into which I fell head-first, coming back to the surface with more questions than answers and who knows how many untold stories hovering just out of reach. I’m trying to recall whether there are further details on any of this in the rest of The Shining (it’s been several years since my last reread and I’m about halfway through this time around—we’ve just made the acquaintance of the woman in Room 217) or in Dan’s childhood recollections in Doctor Sleep (2013), so further rereading is in order and some possibilities might well come to light as my memory is refreshed. 

But right now—for me, ast least—the Torrances’ path remains a mystery. 

[Page numbers are from the Pocket Books paperback edition of The Shining]