Brain Damage
"The Lunatic"
Rather than proceeding evidence in the story's sequential order, I will be presenting the groundwork as it relates to each song, accordingly. It is best to begin this analysis with some lines from Pink Floyd's, Brain Damage, to recognize the significance of the inspiration of the creation of Jack Torrance, in other words, the anchor. The song repeatedly references a lunatic in different places. He moves from a hall, to the narrator's hall and ventures on until he finds his final destination in the narrator's mind. “The lunatic is in the hall; the lunatics are in my hall.” The lyrics continue, “The lunatic is in my head.” Once the lunatic reaches this destination, the lyrics that proceed are a direct layout of events that Wendy takes in The Shining: “You raise the blade; you make the change; you rearrange me ‘til I’m sane” and “You lock the door and throw away the key. There’s someone in my head, but it’s not me.”
The Blade
The notion of "rearranging" the lunatic with a blade until he is sane eludes to the notion of relief of insanity through death. While Jack does not die from the blade, it is still a prominent scene depicted in the book and Kubrick decided to keep it in the movie, along with Wendy locking Jack in the pantry. The person in Jack's head at that moment was not the man that he was known to be by his wife and his son: Jack, before the mask came off.
The Newspaper
A turning point in Jack's story is when he stumbles upon the scrapbook in the boiler room. Finding as much information about The Overlook becomes his new addiction, a sort of scratching-at-an-itch that he cannot shake. He finds a bundle of newspapers that contain articles that detail gruesome murders that took place in the hotel as it was passed through the hands of crime overlords. “The paper holds their folded faces to the floor and every day the paperboy brings more.”. This is connected to the book where King wrote, "The clipping on the next page was so large that it had been folded. Jack unfolded it and gasped harshly" (240). We can look at the interpretation of the paperboy as two different individuals. We could see this represented in Jack, who is bringing more of these visions of people to life from the continual research that he does that allows him to unearth a chain of individuals linked to The Overlook, or we can see the representation as an actual paperboy who keeps bringing these newspapers that are added to the scrapbook before Jack finds it- linking the present to the past: to the hotel’s history.
The Hotel
“And if the dam breaks open many years too soon and if there is no room upon the hill,” was used as another reference to Jack’s mental disturbance. There were many times in which he could have completely “lost his marbles” prior to their stay at The Overlook, but it was the hotel in which this occurrence needed to happen. Mr. Ullman made it very clear to Jack that he would not have gotten the job if his close friend and member of the hotel’s Board of Directors, Al Shockley, made sure that Mr. Ullman hired him. What would have happened to Jack if he didn’t get this job: if there was “no room upon the hill”?
The Dark Side
Seeing that there is a clear influence drawn by King, we see this must have noticed by Kubrick because the same songs link to his involvement in the fake moon landing theory and present themselves in the movie, The Shining. A prominent line in Brain Damage states, “And if your head explodes with dark forebodings too, I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon.” The dark side of the moon is, of course, the side that is not visible from earth. The side that is shadowed with secrets. This is a direct connection to his dark secret of the fake moon landing.
The last line to analyze from this song is, “You shout and no one seems to hear.” This is a reference that can most definitely go back to King as it describes a means of attempted escape from one engulfed in the strangling strands of his mind. This could also be connected to Wendy’s inability to call for help due to the seclusion of staying at the hotel. I see this details Kubrick's mental exhaustion of holding in a secret of such importance from the world.
The song can be heard in the video below. The lyrics are also featured in the video.