ABSTRACT
Chapter four examines madness and creativity in The Shining by focusing on Danny Torrance's psychological development from childhood to adolescence and on Jack Torrance as a writer suffering writer's block. Danny's maturation shows that the supernatural in King's The Shining is not merely a device for creating horror, but – manifested in the ghostly appearances of Tony – the supernatural makes it possible to study Danny's future transition to adolescence. Several King scholars, such as Curran (1992), explain King's use of fairy tales in The Shining as a negative father complex. My theory shows that it is also possible to relate fairy tales to Danny's maturation. The second part of this chapter compares Jack's act of writing to that of King's transcendent writers. In contrast to King's transcendent writers, Jack has no stable sense of identity and his reflections on his youth are merely traumatic. By concentrating on Jack's downfall, my theory shows that a stable identity might be a fiction, but it is a necessary fiction for good mental health. Jack's lack of a stable sense of identity results in a schizophrenic rage that leads to his downfall.
