No.30
No.30 is about escalation. Danny tours the 2nd floor hallway, literally the floor above where he was triking around in this scene’s counterpart. Here we are introduced to Room 237, mentioned during Danny’s conversation with Halloran, yet Kubrick shows us the Grady Girls in the West Wing Hallway.
American History/Culture
Danny wears red, white, and blue
Domestic abuse
Nothing outright, but it is strange that the space Danny is afraid of shows up visually around the space where Jack is shown working most often.
As Danny touches the doorknob, he’s shown a space around where he and his family are staying— not the interior of the space he touches.
The Maze
Kubrick as Unreliable Narrator:
i. When Danny tries to turn the doorknob of Room 237, the viewers are shown The Grady Girls in the West Wing Hallway, not Room 237- as we’re shown in A48.
The device shows Danny’s thoughts as well as transmitting information from his internal protection (Tony, A6), or to someone else (Halloran, A48). Which leaves up to the viewer to decide what A50 and A64 are. Most likely images that come when Danny hears what his parents are doing/talking.
ii. We aren’t shown anything related to Room 237, the bathroom, the woman in the bathtub— none of it. We hear about it as Danny asks Halloran. We’re not given all of the information, even when we’re given access to private information.
Ghost Story
Danny brings up Room 237 during an honest and earnest conversation with Halloran, so when we see it here, it’s a reiteration of the fear (and that fear automatically connects with ghosts), what’s happened in this room, and what could happen in this room.
Danny touching the doorknob and seeing The Grady Girls presents an option that whatever happened, happened here.
Cabin Fever:
Danny’s exploration in the hotel serves as a way for him to entertain himself.
The camera tracks behind Danny and his tricycle, quickly touring the hallway.
The carpet’s optical eye play is part of what makes the looping of Danny’s path work so well.
Danny starts out facing Room 237. It is on the right side, next to the ashtray. Danny loops behind the hardwood portion of the 2nd floor hallway to loop back and have Room 237 on his left. When A30 started, Room 237 was on his right overlapping the stairwel
The 2nd Floor Hallway
Danny
The Grady Girls
This scene and sequence has a sound repetition.
Here, the sound begins with Danny triking over Jack’s writing area in The Colorado Lounge and ends with Wendy greeting Jack in the following scene; the finale of the cymbal crashing as Jack rips the paper from the typewriter.
We’ve heard it as Jack throws the tennis ball in the lobby while Wendy and Danny are overplayed touring the hedge maze, ending with Wendy and Danny talking: “Didn’t think it would be this big did you? / “Nope”.
The final instance is where Danny enters into the Bedroom of the West Wing Living Quarters and ends as Jack tells Danny how much he loves him and would never do anything to hurt him.
Kubrick’s use of this sound in this pattern creates additional meaning. Linking the Hedge Maze experience of playful chase and the hedge maze experience of survival /harmful chase, Jack’s false promise and fear around Room 237 creates the message that Danny’s fear of Room 237 is in fact the real threat of living with Jack Torrance, and communicates The Grady Girls as more of a warning than the threat itself.
It also creates the feeling of whimsy/dream like experience around Jack’s work, the center of the maze, and Jack’s feelings about Danny (directly foreshadowing A45, A53, A63, A69, A79, A88)