"Here's Johnny!" - Jack's most famous quote.
Jack Torrance is the main protagonist and antagonist of the film The Shining. He was the caretaker of the Overlook Hotel who lived there along with his wife Wendy and his son Danny. Slowly but surely, Jack goes crazy and is driven to murder his entire family.
He was portrayed by Jack Nicholson.
Personality[]
Not much is known about Jack's personality. In front of Stuart Ullman, Jack is kind and treats everyone with respect, but this could be just him faking his personality in order to get the job. Despite this Jack is shown to be nice towards his family before he goes crazy. It's not until he stays at the Overlook Hotel does he change and becomes more and more abusive and chaotic.
Biography[]
Jack was a writer who accepted the job of winter caretaker for the Overlook Hotel, despite being informed of the building's grisly past and reputation as a cursed place (which he shrugged off as a superstition) and he took his wife Wendy and son Danny with him to the hotel and thought that the solitude of the place would help inspire him in his writing as well. He shows his first sign of going insane about a month after his application when he verbally abuses his wife Wendy for "distracting" him from his work.
Not long after, Danny has communicated with him about their experiences in the hotel. Danny uses his Shining ability to tell that Jack wants to hurt both him and his mother, implying that Jack has already gone insane. He has one of his more sympathetic moments in the film when he has a nightmare about killing Wendy and Danny, before waking up, screaming and crying about it to Wendy.
However, when a silent Danny walks in on and reveals the neck injury that he received from the old woman in Room 237, Wendy accuses Jack of abusing his son again. Jack is surprised and confused by this. Jack bitterly goes downstairs to the Hotel's abandoned pub to brood about his family, whispering to himself that he'd sell his "goddamned soul" for a glass of beer.
Not long after this Lloyd the Bartender mysteriously appears (implying the Overlook Hotel may have taken up Jack's deal) and offers Jack fine alcohol on the house. Jack accepts the bourbon, breaking the alcohol abstinence he had been taking for the past few months. Lloyd and Jack act as if they've known each other for years, as the latter tells Lloyd that he's not happy with both his family and his life, and claims that he injured Danny's arm three years ago, whereas Wendy claimed that it was only five months ago. This implies that this wasn't the first or last time that Jack injured Danny or Jack lied to make himself look better.
When Jack goes back upstairs, Wendy immediately apologizes for accusing him and immediately tells him about the woman in Room 237. He insults her and calls her crazy instead of accepting the apology before she makes herself serious. He then checks the room where he finds a beautiful woman in the bathtub. With a sinister grin on his face, he lustfully embraces the woman as she seduces him and they start kissing, blatantly cheating on his wife, before discovering that the beautiful woman is actually the ghost of a hideously deformed old lady. In shock, he escapes the room as the ghost cackles wickedly.
When he gets back, he lies to his wife about not seeing anyone in the room, in order to cover up his tracks, claiming that Danny injured himself. When she asks for them to leave the hotel, he berates and insults her, claiming that he absolutely refuses to leave the hotel before storming off in a rage. When he gets to the barroom, it's now filled with ghosts before reuniting with Lloyd and asking for a drink. He starts exploring the place before a waiter accidentally spills lemonade all over him. The waiter apologizes and takes Jack to the bathroom to clean him up.
There, they have a friendly conversation, before Jack recognizes him as Charles/Delbert Grady, the previous caretaker, and reminds him of what he did. Grady then claims that he "corrected" his family and that Jack needs to "correct" his. Jack is then seduced by the hotel, and unlike the novel where he was being brainwashed against his will by the spirits, he willingly agrees to kill his family.
After Jack attempts to murder Wendy, she locks him in the pantry for her and her son's safety. He's quickly let out though by the spirits and gleefully attempts to kill his wife and son with his iconic ax instead of a rogue mallet. When Dick Halloran arrives to help, Jack murders him with the ax.
During a fearsome manhunt, he maniacally and gleefully chases Danny with his ax through the snowy maze until Danny outsmarts him by leaving a false trail, allowing him and his mother to escape. As he stumbles around in the maze, all Jack can do is scream and yell incomprehensible gibberish, showing just how far his mental state has degraded. Jack is ultimately left to freeze to death in the giant maze outside the hotel, clearly having gone way too far to redeem himself.
The film ends by featuring an old photograph of a ball at the hotel from July 4, 1921, that shows Jack at the event. What does this exactly mean is beyond anyone's speculation and is likely up for the viewer to think about.