'The Shining'

I've read two Stephen King novels (in addition to some short stories) and the two I've read have had very similar themes. So similar I wonder now what his other books are really about.

In "It" and "The Shining," King's characters find themselves blindly battling a series of mystical or otherworldly powers some we assume are bad and others good.

All the while, the true demons in each novel are the characters' pasts. While our attentions are placed on evil clowns or ghosts, what drives and haunts these people are their horrific and angst-filled childhoods. These scars the characters just can't shake and they swell and pulsate until they break the skin, irritate and then infect.

It's the battle in the heart and head that King is most worried about. Fight as they may, Wendy was never, ever going to kill "Jack," or the man formerly known as "Jack" who by the end of the book is possessed by the spirit or demon within the hotel. However, it took young Danny to realize what Wendy and the hotel itself couldn't think of because they were so interested in killing the flesh. It wasn't brawn, but brains that won the day.

What I loved most about this book is the end when Jack is possessed by the hotel demon and he's searching the building for his son, Danny, who has some unexplained power of foresight, telepathy and ability to see the unseen, I guess. While roaming the halls of the hotel searching for the boy with a roque mallet, Danny confronts the demon inside his father saying that the "hotel" will never win and that the man holding the mallet wasn't his father, but the demon.

In a small slip, Jack takes control of his body again to tell his son to run and to remember that his father loved him. Both realized they'd never see each other again. It was a really sweet, human moment during a series of chapters were humaness and goodness were gone.