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🍞 Trail of Breadcrumbs

A rebus is read one link at a time. Each link below is on the page or on the screen.

rebus wendy WENDY suncat sun-headed cat wendy->suncat ladder LADDER wendy->ladder louis Louis XIV suncat->louis furn furniture louis->furn clock clock face furn->clock felix Felix the Cat clock->felix boiler boiler sphinges felix->boiler boiler->ladder sevenup 7 Up ladder->sevenup monte Montespan monte->louis hag woman in 237 hag->monte

The woman in 237 → Montespan. On the coffee table in Boulder sits The Courts of Europe (1977). Page 237 shows "Madame de Montespan with her children," mistress of the Sun King, accused of black masses in the Affair of the Poisons. Her paintings put her in the bath, among cherubs, with silver ewers pouring. The woman in 237 rises from a bath.

Montespan → Louis XIV. They were lovers. On the same page: Nocret's painting of the King enthroned as Apollo, his family as the gods.

Louis XIV → furniture. On the shelf beside Hallorann, at the exact middle of the film, is Mary Roberts Rinehart's The Door (1930), the mystery where the butler did it. Its hiding place is a cabinet, "a fine example of Louis Fourteenth, of satinwood and kingswood."

Furniture → clock face. The cabinet opens by a dial of bronze rosettes: "Clock dial. Five o'clock right. Seven o'clock left. Press on six."

Clock face → Felix the Cat. The cat clock. It is "not a clock at all. Something which might be described in clock fashion."

Felix the Cat → the boiler. In King's novel, Watson shows Jack the furnace: "The iron radiated a stuporous heat at them, and for some reason Jack thought of a large, dozing cat." Kubrick gives it two distinct Felix eyes—a pair of sphinges flanking the ladder.

The sphinges → the ladder. Sphinxes guard a door and eat the young and issue riddles: What is the meaning of this conspicuous ladder?

The ladder → 7 Up. 7 Up turns up in the closing-day sequence and around the hotel. In the storeroom where Hallorann offers Danny some EYESCREAM, the seven cans give us the seven: children on the mountain, and Wendy is involved. So where are the children? We're led to believe the hotel is empty, and if they were in the rooms we would hear them. The film keeps us from going upstairs until the end, so we take UP to mean upstairs, or 237 on the second floor. But UP is in the basement: up the ladder.

Wendy → the ladder. At its foot is the warden's desk, the most evil place in The Shining: the snuff and torture pictures, the hellscape, the blood chalice of La Voisin's black masses. That's where Wendy is, with the lights to the upstairs turned on, when Jack has his nightmare.

the-shining published writings kubrick film analysis

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