What Is The Theme Of The Holocaust In The Shining, By Stanley Kubrick

Geoffrey Cocks deals with the reasons that The Shining dwells on history so heavily in his essay “Death by Typewriter: Stanley Kubrick, the Holocaust, and The Shining” and in his book The Wolf at the Door: Stanley Kubrick, History, and the Holocaust. He deals primarily with how tragedies of the century in which Kubrick grew up affected him, especially the Holocaust given Kubrick’s Jewish roots. The film of The Shining indeed holds various visual, auditory, and thematic references the ties it to the Holocaust, and Diane Johnson says of the idea that these details show a preoccupation on Kubrick’s part, “Certainly this focus was never mentioned to me or discussed as part of his conscious intention, but his interest in the extermination of Indian …show more content…
Whether this is the movie Kubrick made about the Holocaust as Cocks argues in the beginning of Chapter 9 of his book seems behind the book- the Holocaust and the time period leading up to the making of The Shining definitely affected the film and its themes. Particularly the themes examined by this essay, of historical cycles of violence and the remembrance of history. Themes against nostalgic, rose-colored views of the past are well established in The Shining, considered both in “The Shining and Anti-Nostalgia: Postmodern Notions of History” by R. Barton Palmer and "Remembrance of Things Forgotten: The Shining” in the book by Thomas Allen Nelson. Remembering the truth of the past, no matter how brutal, is also a theme of cultural around the Holocaust. Remembering the Holocaust is meant to ensure that it would never happen again and “Never again” and “Never forget” are slogans generally associated with the Holocaust, and one of the most important events associated with the Holocaust is the annual Holocaust Remembrance …show more content…
It may not be a movie specifically about the Holocaust but it is a moving that warns that systems of oppression are designed to murder and produce atrocities, and to view systems of sexism and white supremacy with nostalgia is to endorse that violence. This is the reason that the main villain of the film is Jack Torrance, the middle-aged white man. The shining of the Overlook Hotel affected each character different because it was based on histories of oppression that offered the most power and privilege to Jack. Shining is a personal talent, a kind of sixth sense common in few people, that the son, Danny, has in abundance. Shining is inherently individual, and in that way personal. In the film Danny Torrence and Dick Hallorann are the only two characters said outright to have the shining, but all three members of the family experience supernatural aspects of the hotel before the film is over. It may be that the talent is genetic and that Wendy, the mother, and Jack also have some amount of supernatural “shining” talent, but it could also just be the effect of the Overlook Hotel itself.