Who is delbert grady in the shining

Of course, the ghost of Grady freeing Jack from the freezer remains hard to explain away, although that doesn't stop some from trying. As mentioned above, the film ends with Wendy and Danny escaping during a snowstorm thanks to the snowcat Hallorann arrived in.

The Shining novel, however, has a very different ending, and one that even made way for a sequel: Doctor Sleep. The hotel makes one last attempt to possess Hallorann but he successfully manages to avoid it. As for Jack, he does die but not in the snow: a malfunctioning boiler explodes and kills Jack while also destroying the hotel.

The novel ends with Danny and Wendy spending the summer at a resort in Maine where Hallorann works as head chef. The three remain close, and Hallorann comforts Danny over the loss of his father and teaches him to fish. Interestingly, in the Shining miniseries, which King himself wrote, there's a brief epilogue in which a graduating Danny is visited by the ghost of Jack, beaming with pride, suggesting that Jack's spirit was fully freed when the Overlook blew up.

The Shining novel and film work best as separate pieces, and each ending has a different meaning. The sequel to The Shining, 's Doctor Sleep movie managed to walk a delicate tightrope between adapting King's Shining sequel book and being a follow-up to Kubrick's Shining movie.

Directed by modern horror master Mike Flanagan, Doctor Sleep offered an unexpected treat in the form of an extended cameo by none other than Jack Torrance himself, now played by Henry Thomas. This appearance doesn't clear up the question about why Jack is seen in the photo at the Overlook, but it does suggest that the idea his soul was somehow absorbed the haunted hotel is true.

Adult Danny Torrance is forced to head to the Overlook in order to unleash a greater evil on villain Rose the Hat, but while there encounters the ghost of his father. Yet, this isn't Jack, rather, it's Lloyd the bartender, albeit not the same Lloyd Jack himself encountered. Some believe this suggests Lloyd the bartender was never a real person , and instead just a role the Overlook assigns to one of the souls it owns. While Danny's barbs do eventually seem to wake up part of Jack's consciousness from inside his Lloyd identity, whatever good he had left in him was clearly erased once Jack was fully taken over by the Overlook.

It's a truly sad thing but in line with Kubrick's The Shining. Adrienne Tyler is a features writer for Screen Rant. They rescued four children, but had to leave the other five people behind. By the time the fourth party reached the camps on April 17th, only one man was left alive, and he was safely returned to the Fort.

He too had resorted to cannibalism. In all, of the original 87 pioneers, 39 died and 48 survived. They are Grady's daughters, who were murdered during their father's tenure as the hotel caretaker. References to Native Americans and their culture are dotted throughout the film. For example, Stuart Ullman points out that the hotel is built on the site of an ancient Indian burial ground; Indian motifs and designs decorate the walls of the interior of the hotel; Calumet baking powder cans feature prominently in two pivotal scenes as Hallorann first shines, asking Danny if he wants some ice-cream, and as Jack asks Grady to let him out of the locked pantry ; July 4th is given great significance at the end of the film.

These references to Native American culture and history are unique to the film, they are not found in the book, and this has prompted many fans over the years to query their importance. On July 29th, , Bill Blakemore published a short article in the San Francisco Chronicle entitled "The Family of Man," in which he attempted to attribute specific meaning to the Native American references found in the film.

Blakemore argued that The Shining is not so much about one man's murderous rampage in an effort to destroy his family, as it is about the murderous rampage of the white man in an effort to destroy the Native American race.

In his introductory paragraph, Blakemore very clearly states, The Shining is not really about the murders at the Overlook Hotel. It is about the murder of a race -- the race of Native Americans -- and the consequences of that murder Blakemore takes a predominantly metaphorical approach to the film, arguing that hidden meaning is to be found beneath the surface, and that that hidden meaning, when discovered in an individual scene or character, can then be applied to the film as a whole.

For example, he finds the scene immediately after Jack kills Hallorann as particularly significant in a metaphorical sense. Blakemore argues that the long shot showing the grinning Jack standing over Hallorann's bleeding body, which is lying across a rug decorated with an Indian motif, is a metaphor for the violence perpetrated by white people over black people and Indians in America.

Blakemore works to connect different aspects of the film which may not initially seem connected at all.

For example, he argues that the reference to Indian burial ground and the river of blood flowing from the elevator are intimately tied together; the first and most frequently seen of the film's very real American "ghosts" is the flooding river of blood that wells out of the elevator shaft, which presumably sinks into the Indian burial ground itself.

The blood squeezes out in spite of the fact that the red doors are kept firmly shut within their surrounding Indian artwork embellished frames. We never hear the rushing blood. It is a mute nightmare. It is the blood upon which this nation, like most nations, was built, as was the Overlook Hotel. Like most viewers, Blakemore also finds the final shot to be greatly significant, and it too contains hidden meaning which informs the film's protest against the violence perpetrated against Native Americans; the master key to unlocking the whole movie, is that most Americans overlook the fact that July Fourth was no ball, nor any kind of Independence day, for Native Americans; that the weak American villain of the film is the re-embodiment of the American men who massacred the Indians in earlier years; that Kubrick is examining and reflecting on a problem that cuts through the decades and centuries.

Blakemore concludes his article by extending his argument even further, saying, although Kubrick is protesting against the specific violence experienced by Native Americans, he is also protesting against the general violence experienced by all mankind; though Kubrick has made here a movie about the arrival of Old World evils in America, he is exploring most specifically an old question: Why do humans constantly perpetuate such "inhumanity" against humans?

That family is the family of man. Reaction to Blakemore's article has been mixed over the years, although some critics have latched onto his hypothesis and ran with it.

Kahan argues that The Overlook Hotel is America. America, like the Overlook, is built on an Indian graveyard. The blood of the buried Indians seeping up through the elevator shafts is silent.

So are the Indian tapestries that Danny rides over on his Big Wheel. The Shining is Kubrick's observation that America is built on hypocrisy, on a failure -- a refusal -- to acknowledge the violence from which it is born. That violence remains silent today because we refuse to look in the mirror - where all the ugly truths appear: Redrum spelled correctly; Jack's old crone, etc.

July 4th marks the commemoration of the ugliness on which this country is built: it is the demarcation of the annihilation of the aboriginal people, and the formal establishment of the new society. Americans "overlook" the bloodshed upon which our society is founded: the British Grady heritage of violent colonialism, carried forward by American Jack colonizers.

The hotel room in the novel which Danny enters and which contains the dead woman was , but the movie changed the number to The filmmakers stated that the hotel used for the exterior shots, the Timberline, did not want the number used, as they actually had a room and did not want guests to be averse to booking it after the film was released.

They did not, however, have a room The documentary film Room , which advances numerous theories involving hidden meanings within the film, makes the claim that the official explanation is untrue, stating that the Timberline did not have a room , either, and that therefore the change must be for some other reason. However, the Timberline itself disputes this, stating that they do indeed have a room , and that guests often request to book room , suggesting that the change of number might actually have been a detriment to business rather than serving its originally intended purpose.

Like several other aspects in the story, this is explained in the book but is left far more ambiguous in the film. In the book, the woman's name is Mrs. She came to the Overlook Hotel to conduct an affair with a much younger man; every night, she would get very drunk at the bar, and the two would go back to the room room in the novel to have sex.

After several days, the young man came down while Mrs. Massey was passed out and took off with the Porsche in which they'd arrived. He didn't return. The following evening, Mrs. Massey got into the bathtub in her room and killed herself by taking thirty sleeping pills washed down with liquor. After her body was discovered, Mr. Massey flew in from New York and threatened to sue Stuart Ullman.

However, after realizing what a scandal it would cause both of them, Ullman and Massey covered up the incident by bribing the coroner to change the cause of death from suicide by overdose to heart attack.

Afterwards, anyone with the shining ability was able to see Mrs. Massey in the bathtub of the room. In the movie, this entire subplot is excluded, yet the old woman Billie Gibson in the bathtub is present, albeit with little or no explanation for who she is or why she is there.

The most obvious explanation in the context of the film is that room is merely a haunted room where an old lady died and, when Danny entered the room, the old lady tried to strangle him.

However, when Jack goes into the room, instead of seeing an old lady, he sees a beautiful young woman Lia Beldam in the tub. Only after he begins kissing her does he look into the mirror and realize that she has turned into the old woman, who subsequently chases him from the room. This discrepancy between Danny's experience and Jack's experience is sometimes interpreted as Jack's complete embracing of the evil in the hotel, choosing it over his family; metaphorically represented by the fact that he has no qualms about committing adultery with this woman.

Once he has embraced the evil, it shows its true form, as it no longer needs to seduce him; i. Another theory is that the woman is Grady's wife, whom he murdered along with his two daughters. Grady's murder of his family is the only instance of murder which occurred in the hotel at least as far as we know , and prior to Jack's entry to room , the only ghosts seen up to that point are the Grady daughters. Stuart Ullman mentions that Grady stacked the bodies in an unspecified room, and then shot himself; this room could theoretically be room , hence the reason why both Danny and Hallorann sense something troubling emanating from that room.

A third theory is provided by film critic Jonathan Romney , who argues that perhaps the scene doesn't take place at all; Whether or not Danny's telepathy brings the Overlook's specters to life, what's certain is that the boy is actually able to transmit them.

The film's big horror routine - Jack's encounter in Room with an etiolated vamp turned suppurating hag - might not really be happening at all Jack subsequently tells Wendy he's seen nothing in the room , but may in its entirety be a hyperimaginative boy's visual metaphor for the urgency of events.

There's a stark difference between the shots of Danny wide-eyed in shock elsewhere in the film and the images of him here, in a dribbling trance, not so much transfixed as in a state of extreme concentration, as if he's at once composing the images and sending them.

Filmmaker Paul Mayersberg provides still another view: It would be wrong to insist on a single interpretation of this scene, but in looking at it, it exposes the heart of Kubrick's method in the film. First, it is a rewrite of the shower scene in Psycho In Psycho it is the lady in the shower who is threatened by the monster outside. In The Shining this is reversed.

Jack is the "monster", scared by what might emerge from the shower behind the curtain. This reversal of well-known horror conventions is one of many in the film. Underlying many sequences in The Shining is a critique of the whole genre of horror movies. The character of Jack Torrance himself is presented as the innocent, not knowing what he is getting himself into, whereas he is in fact the threatening element.

Secondly, the woman turning from slim youth to grotesque age is perhaps symbolic of everyone's most feared destiny, growing old. To watch your own body over a period of years disintegrate before the mirror is an essential horror story for all of us.

Fear of old age grips Jack Torrance by the throat as does fear of losing his mind. Growing old and losing your senses, time passing, is a frightening notion that is inescapable. Thirdly, it is the only overtly sexual scene in the movie. The Shining is a strangely chaste horror story. Part of this comes from Jack's sexual indifference; he is always glancing at women, including his wife, but he never actually does anything to them.

Lack of sexual drive is characteristic of a paranoid personality. The young naked woman also seems asexual. She looks like one of those models who pose in seedy lunchtime photographic clubs.

Fourthly, the marks on the old woman's body, which so repel Jack, are difficult to identify. When she rises out of the bath in a shot that seems to refer to Henri-Georges Clouzot 's Les diaboliques ] Edit. It isn't explained in the film but, in the book, it's mentioned that Danny's psychic abilities give the malevolent spirits of the Overlook a stronger power and that they feed on the strength of his psychic energy.

Thus, the woman in room becomes more powerful and is able to physically attack Danny. Also, Hallorann may have said the ghosts weren't dangerous because, for the most part, they're not, or possibly because they had never been dangerous in his personal experience.

However, when Danny asks about room and whether Hallorann was scared of that room, Hallorann's cheerful demeanor quickly changes to serious and direct. Hallorann says to Danny, "No I'm not [afraid of room ] But you don't got no business going in there anyhow, so stay out of room you understand? Stay out! During his first conversation with Lloyd Joe Turkel , Jack asks for a drink and then says, You set 'em up and I'll knock 'em back Lloyd, one b'one.

White man's burden, Lloyd my man. White man's burden. There are several viable interpretations of Jack's use of the phrase. Firstly, In the context of the scene, Jack could be referring simply to alcoholism and, as a former school teacher, he is making an ironic reference to Rudyard Kipling's poem "The White Man's Burden".

It's possible that he is, quite simply, referring to the alcohol itself, calling it a burden in an ironic sense because he enjoys it so much, and referring to it as "white man's" insofar as Caucasian men introduced alcohol into the Americas, hence they now have the "burden" of drinking it. As such, he is, in effect, saying, "Give me a drink, such is my burden. Merriam-Webster Online defines the phrase "white man's burden" as the alleged duty of the white peoples to manage the affairs of the less developed nonwhite peoples.

The white man's burden was to raise non-white people out of poverty and ignorance through imperialism, whilst at the same time alcohol was turning white men into savages. Danny uses his shining ability to send a telepathic message to Hallorann in Florida telling him that all is not well in the hotel.

The scene where Hallorann lies on his bed, realizing that something is wrong in the hotel i. In Jack's interview at the start of the film, Stuart Ullman tells him the story of a former caretaker who got cabin fever, butchered his family with an axe and then shot himself. The man's name was Charles Grady.

Later on in the film, Jack meets a butler also called Grady and Jack explains to him that he knows all about the man's murder of his family, as he saw the pictures in the paper and he recognizes him.

The problem is that the butler's name is Delbert Grady, not Charles Grady. Some viewers see this as a continuity error while others conclude that it could not possibly exist by accident and, therefore, must have meaning. It is to say he is two people: the man with choice in a perilous situation and the man who has 'always' been at the Overlook. It's a mistake to see the final photo as evidence that the events of the film are predetermined: Jack has any number of moments where he can act other than the way he does, and that his poor choices are fueled by weakness and fear perhaps merely speaks all the more to the questions about the personal and the political that The Shining brings up.

In the same way Charles had a chance - once more, perhaps - to not take on Delbert's legacy, so Jack may have had a chance to escape his role as 'caretaker' to the interests of the powerful.

It's the tragic course of this story that he chooses not to. Jack in the photo has "always" been at the Overlook, Jack the caretaker chooses to become part of the hotel if one follows the logic of this argument, the implication is that the person in the July 4th photo would not in fact be called Jack. The problem with this argument is that the film itself provides no solid evidence for such a claim - any arguments that the change in name has any significance whatsoever remain wholly speculative.

It also fails to address the fact that while Jack appears to learn of the story for the first time from Mr. Ullman, he later tells Grady that he learned of the incident via the newspaper this may reference a scene from the book, wherein Jack spends an afternoon in the hotel basement reading a collection of clippings detailing the Overlook's history; that theory is supported by the fact that a scrapbook of clippings is indeed visible on Jack's writing desk in one scene, but despite its presence he's never shown reading or otherwise acknowledging it in any cut of the film.

The viewer must additionally rationalize why Jack reacts to the name Delbert Grady and assumes this man to be the man initially named to him as Charles an assumption Grady himself eventually confirms. It's perhaps significant to note that in the novel, the character is always known as Delbert. On the other hand, the film's assistant editor Gordon Stainforth ] So, is the name change a continuity error or a hint at a deeper meaning?

Stainforth is probably nearest the truth when he says "I don't think we'll ever quite unravel this. As such, it is ultimately left up to each individual viewer to make up their own mind and reach their own conclusions as regards the ambiguity. Delbert, as he is first introduced, is a nice polite butler but as the scene and movie go on we can get a sense of his transformation into Charles.

The same may be suggested for Jack. While many can argue that Johnny is another name for Jack, as Bill to William for example. It has been said that the line was improved by Nicholson. But as Jack is "hacking" into the bathroom with the axe and yells the famous line "Here's Johnny! One of the most chilling and surprising shots in the movie is the man in the horrible, bear suit giving felattio to a man dressed in a tuxedo.

The movie doesn't expressly explain the identity of the man, but in the book, Stephen King provides the answer. In brief, it references a scene from the book in which the Overlook Hotel's former owner, Horace Derwent, is receiving fellatio from a pining lover Roger, who is dressed in a dog costume. However, Kubrick made some key changes for specific reasons. According to Stanley Kubrick: For the purposes of telling the story, my view is that the paranormal is genuine. Jack's mental state serves only to prepare him for the murder, and to temporarily mislead the audience As the supernatural events occurred you searched for an explanation, and the most likely one seemed to be that the strange things that were happening would finally be explained as the products of Jack's imagination.

It's not until Grady, the ghost of the former caretaker who axed to death his family, slides open the bolt of the larder door, allowing Jack to escape, that you are left with no other explanation but the supernatural. The spirit of Delbert Grady unlocked the door. Fans of the film, like film psychologist Rob Ager also suggests that it could have been Danny so that Jack could be trapped in the maze.

Jack chases Danny out of the hotel into the hedge maze. Danny backtracks in the snow, carefully placing his feet into his own footprints, then hides in the hedges until Jack goes by. Following his own footprints into the maze, Danny makes his way out of the maze and into Wendy's arms.

Wendy loads him into Hallorann's Snow Cat, and they drive away, leaving Jack ranting wildly in the maze. The final scene shows Jack frozen to death in the snow. The camera then pushes in on a display of photos hanging in the Gold Room. One of them, a photo of the July 4th Ball of , features a group of partygoers with Jack at the head. Probably the single most frequently asked question in relation to this film is what does the final shot mean; how and why is Jack in a photograph from ?

In a film with so much irreconcilable ambiguity, this one shot has generated more puzzlement than the entire rest of the movie, yet it is one part of the film on which Stanley Kubrick has been extremely clear about his intentions.

As he told Michel Ciment, "The ballroom photograph at the end suggests the reincarnation of Jack. So, Jack is reincarnated. But what exactly does that mean? Perhaps the simplest explanation for this is that Jack is the reincarnation of a prior hotel guest; the person in the photo is not Jack, but a guest who was present in Jack is the reincarnation of this guest.

This would seem to support Gordon Dahlquist's argument that Delbert Grady and Charles Grady are different people mentioned above ; if we follow the argument through, it would suggest that Charles Grady the caretaker who killed his family was the reincarnation of Delbert Grady the butler in the s.

Similarly, Jack the caretaker who attempts to kill his family is the reincarnation of the unnamed man in the photograph the caretaker in the s. This argument would also seem to support Grady's claim to Jack that he has "always" been the caretaker; if Jack is the reincarnation of the caretaker from the s, it would suggest that the hotel continuously "reanimates" its guests, bringing them back in different guises; hence, just as Delbert was brought back as Charles, so too is the man in the photo brought back as Jack, in a process which, it would seem, is ongoing.

As such, when Grady comments that both he and Jack have always been at the hotel, he is correct; they will forever be brought back to the hotel as reincarnations, hence they are "always" there. However, despite the fact that this argument does seem to take into consideration many of the variables in the film, and does seem to provide a reasonably logical rational for the photograph, it is not the most popular theory about the final shot.

Instead, most fans subscribe to the notion that after he dies, Jack is "absorbed" back through time into the past of the hotel, becoming, for all intents and purposes, a "part" of the hotel. This explains why he is present in a photograph from ; when he dies, the hotel takes hold of his spirit or soul, and traps him within its own history this argument would seem to suggest that Jack was not in the photo prior to his death.

As with the above argument regarding reincarnation, the "absorption theory" would also account for Grady's "always" comment.

Presumably, the same thing happened to Grady as we see happening to Jack, he too dies in the Overlook Hotel, and he too is absorbed back into its past. As such, Grady has always been the butler, just as Jack has always been the caretaker insofar as they were both imprisoned in the future by the hotel, and their spirits became anachronistically part of history.

A reasonably detailed analysis of the mysterious photo was published in the September edition of Sight and Sound magazine; an article by Jonathan Romney entitled "Stanley Kubrick, Resident Phantoms", in which he looks at, amongst other things, the meaning of the film's final shot. Initially, Romney supports the absorption theory, writing The closing inscription appears to explain what has happened to Jack [ At the Overlook, it's always 4 July However, Romney is quick to point out that it may not in fact be this simple; Or you can look at it another way.

Perhaps Jack hasn't been absorbed - perhaps he has really been in the Overlook all along. You've always been the caretaker. In this sense then, Romney is acknowledging that the reincarnation theory is just as plausible as the absorption theory.

Whatever the case however, whether Jack is a reincarnation of a previous guest or whether he has been absorbed into the history of the hotel, Romney reaches one inescapable conclusion about the final shot; Jack's reward, after his defeat [is] a central place among who knows how many other doomed variety acts on the Overlook's wall of fame.

He's added to the bill on the Overlook's everlasting big night back in So, irrespective of whether it is reincarnation or whether it is absorption, it would seem that the one thing about the final shot that is certain is that Jack has somehow, in some sense, become part of the hotel, and will remain a part of it forever.

In the opening sequence of the film, just prior to the beginning of the credit roll, the shadow of the camera helicopter is clearly visible in the lower right hand corner of the frame.

Over the years, this shot has become quite infamous, and has generated a huge amount of debate amongst fans. Generally speaking, there are two prevailing opinions about the shot: 1 It's a goof, plain and simple, and 2 The Shining was shot "flat" as opposed to using anamorphic lenses in an aspect ratio of 1.

This is a process known as "soft matte" or "open matte" which refers to the fact that, for theatrical exhibition, the 1. Unimportant picture information underneath the mattes is never meant to be seen.

If The Shining was projected theatrically incorrectly with the mattes not properly applied, the top or bottom of the frame would become visible when it or they shouldn't, and the helicopter shadow would be revealed. In this case, the shadow is not a goof, it's a projection error; when the film is viewed in its correct 1. Proponents of the aspect ratio theory dismiss proponents of the goof theory by saying there is no way such a massive goof could get into a Kubrick film.

Proponents of the goof theory dismiss proponents of the aspect ratio theory by saying they are wrong, and the shadow is visible in all formats. Assistant editor Gordon Stainforth has spoken at length about this issue: While I did the first cut, it is just possible that made some alterations to the picture when he was finalizing the front titles and credits - I have a distinct recollection of him asking me for the trims - but I think not.

But I do have a recollection that at one stage in the movie some of those cuts were going to be dissolves. It is just possible that when we changed that mix to a straight cut we went back slightly beyond the centre point of the dissolve to get the absolute maximum length out of the shot. A good deal of the horror from this famous element of The Shining is directly tied to duality. If the presence of one of these girls would be terrifying enough, two that look exactly the same up the horror ante.

There is something unnatural in their symmetry - they are not identical, but very nearly so. In keeping with Kubrick's control over every element of his filmmaking, the choice in not casting identical twins was a brilliant one.

They look as if they have been forced to look the same even though at 8 and 10 they are two years apart. For me, this 'forced symmetry' is more disconcerting than a natural one. Come play with us The Grady girls taunt Danny as he roams the halls. The woman who apparently choked Danny lies waiting for Jack Torrance in the bathtub of room Yet again, we find that appearances can be deceiving, as the beautiful young occupant of the room has her illusion stripped away when Jack looks into the mirror.

Once you've been a caretaker, 97k WAV you're always a caretaker, as Jack learns on his descent. Grady seems to get around. Introducing himself as Delbert Grady after ushering Jack into the bathroom, Jack recognizes him as Charles Grady, the former caretaker who murdered his wife and children.

The Overlook is a timeless institution, and both Grady and Torrance have spent at least two periods of time in its employment. Grady, as Delbert, in the 's as a butler, and as Charles the caretaker in Jack is the caretaker of , but Grady reassures him that he has always been in the hotel. This assertment is confirmed at the very end of the film, when a long tracking shot zeroes in on a picture of Jack Torrance in a Overlook ball photograph.

Midnight, the Stars, and You The 'other' Jack mugs for a ballroom photo circa Into the mirror We are introduced to Danny's imaginary friend through this reflection.