The Shining, by Stephen King – Jack Torrance’s lie to himself

I’m a big fan of books that take the time to show their character’s thoughts and reasonings behind their actions, so reading The Shining was a big thrill to see Jack Torrance’s descent into madness. Having already known the ending from seeing Kubrick’s movie version (and multiple YouTube videos comparing the two different versions) it was still thrilling to watch The Overlook Hotel slowly corrupt Jack’s thoughts and emotions.

There are a lot of moments in the later part of the book when it’s clear that Jack is being manipulated, but there is one chapter early on that stood out to me as different.

When Jack takes a chapter to think about the specifics of kicking George Hatfield off the debate team, he outright lies to himself (and the reader). More than once during this chapter Jack assures himself that George is lying out of anger and embarrassment when he claims that Jack set the timer ahead and gave him less time for his debate. It is only at the end of the chapter that Jack finally admits to himself that he did in fact mess with the timer, and only did it for George’s own good.

This moment really stuck out to me and got me hooked into Jack as a character. There are a lot of moments in this book when Jack is trying to rationalize his behavior, or is clearly having his feelings twisted by The Hotel, but this moment seems to be the only time he tells an outright lie to himself.

It’s clear that Jack is an unreliable narrator for a lot of the book, and becomes increasingly irrational as The Overlook sinks its hooks into him – but does anyone else recall any other moments when Jack admits to a straight-up lie?

I began to wonder if the car accident that led to Jack’s sobriety would get revealed to have been more fatal than previously mentioned, but that moment never came.