He's meant to take a gradual descent into insanity, if he was writing the same thing over and over again from the very beginning that means he was batsh!t crazy from the start. I'm sure the Kubrick fanboys will come up with some cop out reason but this scene didn't really fit the character arc.
shareI think the Overlook had almost total control of his mind from the minute he arrived for his interview, and it was making him type that over and over so Wendy did not get suspicious before the proper time came for Jack to kill her and Danny. The Overlook wanted him to appear 'normal' to his family and to wait until they were snowed in before he attacked them to ensure his success. The Overlook had taken over his mind, but it was not a creative writer itself, so it just made Jack believe he was writing a brilliant novel when in reality he was just repeating that phrase over and over.
shareWhat bothers me with the whole "typing repeated sentence" over and over again on a manual typewriter is that the sound of the strikes of the letters onto the paper would also be the same, considering the distance between all the keys, and this sequence of sounds would be the same, always... unless Jack went faster or slower, but that would be even more mentally taxing for him.
Some pages were written with different spaces, some were zig-zagged, etc. That, plus the family mostly hanging out in different parts of the hotel where they might not hear Jack, would account for why they weren’t hearing the same sounds over and over again.
shareBesides, he pretty much told Wendy to stay the fuck away from him when he was "working", whether he was typing or not. Furthermore, Jack may not even been fully aware of what he was typing, OR it could started off as him typing in patterns just to keep his mind busy and stave off boredom, and it slowly, gradually turned into obsessive compulsive behavior, then mania, and finally madness.
shareReally, that's what honestly bothers you about this scene?
shareI think that the typing the same sentence over and over just started as plain old writer's block, plus it was a way to get Wendy to leave him alone for a few hours a day. He'd come there to write his magnum opus, and if it wasn't coming out at first due to writer's block, well, he was going to damn well sit there at his typewriter and type nonsense while trying to think about what to write, in the hopes that eventually something would click and the novel would start to appear on the paper. And while he did that, at least Wendy was off his back.
The whole typing thing wasn't the act of a madman, not at first, it was the act of a man who was unhappy and angry, and who could easily be pushed over the edge if anyone wanted to give him a shove. Here was a man who hated his wife and who was angry at himself and the whole world, and whose self-image was maintained by pretentions he couldn't live up to. Which is a common enough mindset, but most people who are that unhappy and vulnerable to cracking have more sense than to shut themselves in a snowbound hotel for months.
Nice!
That's some clever 'scriptwriting' on your part. I like it.
He should have published it. It probably would have been a best seller!
shareI think you can buy it at some fansite I saw it published - you could really buy it there. just google it.
shareCool!
shareI think you can buy it
https://www.amazon.com/Work-Play-Makes-Jack-Dull/dp/8887381070/
"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
the masterpiece of a well known writer with no readers...
Finally, after more than 40 years, the writer Jack Torrance finds a publisher who wants to bring to the public his final work, written inside the Overlook Hotel, during the last cold winter of his life...
About the Author
Actually, we know very few things about him...
This is the first book (and the only one...) written by Jack Torrance, who accepted the job of the winter caretaker at the "Overlook Hotel" which always gets snowed in during the cold season.
While his family looked around the hotel during closing day, the psychic hotel cook discovered the psychic abilities of Jack' s son Danny, and Danny's ability to detect ghostly presences in the hotel.
In the cook's family, this ability was called "the shining"‘.
When the hotel became snowbound,
Jack Torrance was driven mad by the ghosts in the hotel,
but he began to write his masterpiece: the book you are holding at this very moment...
128 pages of nothing than "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy"."
:D
No Kindle version.
shareJack wrote Gilmore girls
shareI think he started writing an actual book originally and didn’t start to type “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” until after his conversation with Grady. There is that shot of Jack typing when Dick is on the plane so he probably wrote all the pages during that time.
share"I'm sure the Kubrick fanboys will come up with some cop out reason but this scene didn't really fit the character arc."
Maybe it means something your simple mind is not able to compute bro? Some self reflection wouldn't hurt.
Lmao yeah just like I thought. It can't possibly be a flaw in the movie, it must be because of some hidden depth to the movie that they themselves can't articulate. Like I predicted, bullshit cop out reasoning.
shareno no, no hidden depth, it's not that complicated. you are just not able to connect 2 simple dots, but don't worry. good for you
share