Visions Realized

The last time we saw the Torrance family, the reader was really getting an insight into the family.  Daddy had some sort of demon that was driving him to drink to the point of being an alcoholic and commit violent acts.  Wendy had a domineering mother that blamed her for everything even the breakdown of her own marriage.  She kept coming back for more not only from her mother but also from Jack's bad treatment.  And Danny was psychic. 

So with the start of the 8th chapter it appears that Danny is having another one of his visions.  He wakes up and hears someone drunkenly yelling and at him and can't place where the sound is coming from.  He thinks it might be his imaginary friend Good Time Tony trying to communicate with him.  Nope.  Tony doesn't show up.  And Danny goes back to bed with the word redrum flashing in his mind before he succumbs to sleep.


The next chapter features the family driving and finally making it to the Overlook.  During the drive Wendy is basically being a nervous Nelly.  She wonders if the hotel is going to have enough food.  She even somehow manages to bring the Donner party into the story.  As they finally pull up to the hotel, Wendy gets over her nervousness because she thinks the hotel is gorgeous.  Danny on the other hand has and insight.  With one of his trips down the rabbit hole with Tony he had had a version of snow and redrum.  This is it.  Whatever redrum was it was hear.  One of Danny’s premonitions has been realized.

Life is better when your're drunk

When we left the Shining, Danny had fallen down the rabbit hole with his imaginary friend Tony.  He had visited visions of blood, skeletons you know normal things a young child would see every day.  And then the cherry on the sundae is Jack  pulling up to where Danny is seated on the curb with a mallet matted in hair and blood on the passenger seat of his car.   Just kidding.  It was a bag of groceries, Danny. 

The next chapter has Jack and Danny going to a drug store.  Jack runs in and buys some stuff and gets some quarters for change.  He goes to a now extinct closely located pay phone and tries to make a call.  It doesn't appear that the party on the other end is going to pick up.   Jack asks a real live operator on the other end to dial again and they get a hold of Jack's ex drinking buddy. 

Jack starts to have a flashback.  The family is living the sweet life.  They are saving money for a little house.  Then bad fortune befalls them and Jack has his tires slashed by a student at the school where he is teaching.  Because of Jack's normal reaction to this vandalism the board wants him to leave his job.  He goes home that night with the biggest urge to drink that he has had in a long.  He is afraid he is going to do something to Wendy and Danny, so he decides to visit a local bar.  But he does not gives into the temptation to drink.  I think that anger management counseling would have been a better way to solve his issues.

Then King uses the technique of a flashback within a flashback, which I found pretty clever.  Jack  remembered a time when he and his drinking buddy ran into a bike and didn't know if the bikes possible occupant went the way of the crumbled bike.  After that he decides no more drinking.  Wendy confronts him the next day.  He knows that she wants to divorce him but gets a reprieve from the talk she wanted to have.  He quits drinking and Wendy figures this out.

Flash forward to present day.  Jack finally gets a hold of his makeshift AA buddy.  They both reassure each other that they are not drinking.  He hangs up and makes his way back to the car.  Danny gets the feeling that Jack was thinking about The Bad Thing again. It leaves us to wonder again?  What is The Bad Thing?

We learn a little bit more about Wendy with our next chapter.  She has been estranged from her family and doesn't have a great relationship with her mother.  Her mother blames her for the unraveling of her mother’s marriage.  After Danny is born they try to patch up the relationship. 
During this time Jack  is not an alcoholic yet.  One night he gets $900 for a story and celebrates coming home drunk out of his mind the next day.  He drops Danny because of this intoxication.  Evidently Jack is not very good with babies.

Wendy thinks that her marriage is a failure.  She doesn't want to let her mother know this.  She's afraid that she will have to go live with her mother and endure her micromanaging especially with Danny. 
We flash back to when Danny was born as well.  Wendy is in denial but Danny being psychic.  She had a vision of Danny being that way while she was gassed out her mind when she is in labor.  She just thinks he knows things.

She loves Jack and Danny.  She thinks that the job will be the salvation of the family.  But the question is still looming because of the foreshadowing.  Will it really?