What Doctor Sleep Teaches Us About Trauma and Acceptance
As a follow up to The Shining, Doctor Sleep does well on its own. The story centers around a grown-up Danny “Dan” Torrance living in the aftermath of the trauma he faced in The Shining. Note: if you have not seen The Shining, please do. It is an amazing movie and a wild experience. Dan is haunted by both the memory of his father and the fear of becoming him as he slips deeper into his alcoholism. He receives a wake-up call one day from his guide, Tony, and sets out to start fresh in somewhere new.
In a neighboring town, a little girl, Abrah grows into powers similar to Danny’s, she makes a small steady psychic connection to Danny over the span of eight years. One day, she unknowingly connects with another “shining” child as he experiences something horrific. Through him, she encounters a nomadic group of “shining eaters”.
Fearing what happened to the boy and for what might happen to her, she sets out to find Dan. This starts a chain-reaction into a game of cat and mouse with the group of nomadic “shining eaters”.
While this may be a sequel to The Shining, Doctor Sleep holds up its own vastly unique storyline. Very little was mentioned about The Shining and what that might mean in the former movie. But in Doctor Sleep we get to experience the full effect of what it means to be special and the full extent of Danny’s trauma from the Stanley Hotel.
Following the events of The Shining, a young Danny and his mother flee to Florida to live a modest, quiet life. But Danny never experienced quiet as the ghost of the hotel hunted him down over the years. The constant presence of the loss of his father and the events from The Shining wore him down to the point where he hid his “shining” and buried his pain in alcohol and fights.
A lot of this movie focuses on Dan’s trauma and what he does to escape it. When he arrives in Fraiser, New Hampshire, and meets Billy for the first time, he even mentions that he is running away from himself. After seeing how Billy extends his hand of friendship, Dan starts to believe that he can beat his trauma. This is the first act of acceptance.
As the movie progresses, we can see how Danny starts to grow into himself. Where he first shunned his “shine”, as an orderly, patients started to expect it and welcomed him and his gifts. Settling for helping those patients would have been plenty for Dan, except when he is called upon to help Abrah.
We can quickly see how Dan’s fear of his gift and his fear for Abrah starts to creep in. It is there that we see Tony, Dan’s voice and conscious, pop back in one last time to tell him to step it up and continue through his path of acceptance and to not give in to his fear.
Dan is faced with another trying event when he witnesses one of the nomadic “shining eaters” force his best friend, Billy, to kill himself. Following Billy’s death, Dan finds out that Abrah is taken, the exact thing he was trying to prevent. He spirals back into his fear and goes back to his room with a bottle of alcohol wrestling with the need to numb his pain.
This scene is actually one of my favorites as Dan puts the bottle opening to his mouth and lifts it up but doesn’t take a sip, instead he experiences a fit of rage and throws the bottle smashing it to pieces taking charge of his loss by moving on to help Abrah.
The most pivotal part of Dan’s growth and acceptance of his past trauma is seen toward the end of the movie when he comes face to face with his father who is behind the bar at the Stanley Hotel.
This particular scene pays perfect homage to the original film as Dan sits in the same exact spot where his father sat before he gave into the evil energy of the hotel.
He keeps trying to remind the bartender that he is his son, but the bartender deflects and responds with “I am sorry but I think you are mistaken, my name is Lloyd”. Dan pushes even further to create that connection, ending with his father actually remembering but expressing how important glass of whiskey was.
It was his medicine to numb him from his suffocation with being a father and a husband and having to keep feeding mouths. His father then keeps pouring Dan a drink baiting him into taking it. The act of taking the drink symbolizes Dan turning into the very person he fears he would become.
To become the very essence that traumatized him and held him in a cage of fear. The moment that Dan slaps the glass away and says “I will not take my medicine” is the moment he truly accepts that he will never become his father and that he is a better person. This moment is the true acceptance of his past and turning his back to his trauma.
While there was so much that happened in this movie aside from Dan’s acceptance and journey past his trauma, it felt like it was truly closing the door to the original storyline in a way that was refreshing and cathartic. In regards to the remainder of the storyline, this movie did not exactly feel like a true sequel. It had so many elements that expanded into new areas that were not touched on in the original.
This movie would be a little difficult to hop into if you did not watch the original because there were quite a few throwbacks, however, if it is quick to get into. I would recommend this movie to anyone who loves Stephen King, and if you want to see a true personal growth story.
