User blog:AustinDR/PG Removal: Danny Torrance


 * NOTE: This is primarily for the novel version of the character rather than the incarnation featured in the recently released Doctor Sleep film which is itself a sequel to the 1980 film.

What is the work?
The Shining was a 1977 horror novel written by the legendary author Stephen King. The story is about a former teacher, Jack Torrance, who decides to become a writer. As a means of escaping writer's block, Jack takes a job as the winter caretaker of the Overlook Hotel. His son, Danny, wields a psychic power that is nicknamed "the Shining" and the hotel is revealed to be possessed by evil spirits that take possession of Jack, compelling him into trying to kill his family. It was famously adapted into a 1980 film by the late Stanley Kubrick (a favorite of mine), but was famously derided by King himself. In 2013, King wrote a sequel to the book called Doctor Sleep starring a grown-up Danny Torrance who has his own personal demons and tries to fight off the True Knot, a group of long-lived vampiric creatures that feed on the steam of dying children with the shining ability.

Why doesn't Danny Torrance qualify?
Yeah...Danny had it bad since the events of the first novel. He inherits his father's drinking problem and his violence. He also becomes a drifter where he robbed others. While he makes a recovery from his alcohol addiction by attending Alcoholics Anonymous for eight years -- as well as used his shining abilities to ease dying hospice patients into the afterlife, Danny nevertheless still possessed negative attributes that manifest throughout the book.