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Stephen King infuses great depth into his characters, even with how prolific he remains and how expansive his bibliography is. The human villains, like Margaret White, Henry Bowers, and Ace Merrill, who populate his stories are rich and thoughtfully layered. Even Annie Wilkes’ insidious evil is balanced with a good backstory. Jack Torrance being in similar company should come as no surprise. In fact, Jack is the only King character to serve as both protagonist and antagonist.
In Kubrick’s film, he’s primarily a villain rendered as an irredeemably abusive father. He’s a man who is possessed or is having a breakdown because of cabin fever, electing to murder his wife and child in the process. However, King’s vision for Jack is much more nuanced. He bestows compassion into his leading man by giving us a glimpse into Jack’s troubled past and showing us how that trauma informs his adulthood. When Danny attempts to save his father at the novel’s end, Jack snaps back into the man he once was, briefly, and allows his son to escape. He knows the only way Danny and Wendy can be free is if he destroys the Overlook, which means he must destroy himself.
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That kind of empathy, no matter how far below the surface it remains, would have changed the composite of Jack in Kubrick’s adaptation. King’s Jack is his own worst enemy, his terrifying potential given an (almost) heroic arc. It’s safe to say that, in the book version, Jack is not the villain as much as he is a vessel for the hotel’s own sinister agendas. In the movie, he’s a particular kind of unrelenting menace. Few characters have ever been so dynamic on-screen and on the page.