At the core of Stephen King’s Overlook Hotel when he was a kid.
The Shining follows Jack Torrance, an aspiring writer and recovering alcoholic who takes a job as the off-season caretaker of the Overlook Hotel, in the Colorado Rockies. Jack is accompanied by his wife, Wendy, and son Danny, but when a snowstorm leaves them cut off from the outside world, the supernatural forces living in the hotel begin to mess with Jack’s sanity. Meanwhile, Danny goes through his own problems as his powers, referred to as “the shining”, awaken the hotel’s evil forces. Doctor Sleep reunited readers with Danny, now an adult still dealing with the trauma from that winter at the hotel, and who comes across another girl with “the shine” and a cult that feeds off the “steam” produced by those with “the shine” who die in pain.
This special ability of “the shine” plays a key role in both stories, as a trigger to the conflicts and a solution as well, but what it really is about changes a bit in Doctor Sleep. So, what exactly is “the shine” what can those who have it do through it?
The Shine’s Origins Explained
Within The Shining and the Dick Halloran told Danny in The Shining that he and his grandmother had conversations through it, and Abra’s great-grandmother in Doctor Sleep also had the shine. As for the shine’s origins outside this universe, in 1972 Stephen King was working on a novel about a psychic boy in a psychic amusement park, and though he abandoned that book, he returned to the idea of a psychic boy when working on The Shining.
The Shine’s Powers Explained
“The shine” is a psychic ability that enables those who have it to read minds and communicate with other shinning s through the mind, and allows them to see events that have happened in the past as well as those that will happen in the future. As mentioned above, some people have a little bit of it (such as Danny’s parents) and others have a very well developed “shine”, as is the case of Danny and Abra. However, in Doctor Sleep, Danny uses his “shine” to comfort dying patients in a hospice, while Abra can use astral projection and fool the other characters known to have “the shine”. At its core, then, “the shine” is a combination of telepathy and clairvoyance, and depending on who has it and how developed this power is, other abilities can be explored.
