Psychological Isolation and Emotional Collapse: A Humanities Perspective on the Shining

Abstract

This paper explores the psychological and emotional effects of isolation, as depicted in Stephen King's The Shining. Sifting through a humanistic perspective, the research looks into what happens when people endure prolonged isolation— physical and emotional—resulting in psychic breakdown and states of a different reality. Centring its criticism around Jack, Wendy, and Danny Torrance, the study discusses how the Overlook Hotel functions as both a haunted house and a trope for trapping the mind and the heart. Jack’s madness, Wendy’s growing terror and panic, and Danny’s psychic trauma mirror more general concerns in psychological humanities about the boundaries of the human brain faced with social disconnection. Through a consideration of literature as a terrain for psychological investigation, this article also adds to existing discussions of emotional strength and weakness and the cultural depiction of loneliness-induced suffering.