Danny Torrance is introduced in The Shining as the five-year-old son of Jack and Wendy Torrance. He has psychic powers that fellow psychic Dick Halloran calls “shining” - he can read people’s thoughts, communicate telepathically with others who “shine”, and has frequent, frightening prophetic visions. He receives these messages and visions from a supernatural entity he calls “Tony” that only he can see; his parents believe that “Tony” is merely his imaginary friend. Danny has a difficult relationship with Jack, an alcoholic prone to fits of violent anger. During one such drunken rage, Jack grabs Danny’s arm and dislocates the boy’s shoulder. Horrified, Jack quits drinking and tries to be a better parent, hoping to mend their relationship during the five months they are to be living at the Overlook Hotel as caretakers. As Jack falls under the Overlook’s control, however, he grows increasingly unstable, and Danny comes to fear him. At the Overlook, Danny meets head cook Dick Halloran, who also “shines”. The two sense their connection instantly, and Halloran tells Danny to reach out to him with his “shine” if he needs help. While living at the Overlook, Danny experiences terrifying visions of the various evil spirits that inhabit the place, including the ghosts of the former caretaker’s twin daughters, and a desiccated old woman who tries to choke him. He also experiences visions of the word “redrum” - “murder” spelled backwards. When the Overlook possesses Jack completely, he attacks Danny and Wendy with an axe, but they manage to get away by running through the hotel’s topiary garden. Jack tries to kill Danny, but his love for his son is strong enough to break through long enough that Jack allows him to escape. Moments later, Jack causes the hotel’s boiler to explode, destroying the hotel and himself. His spirit remains with Danny, however, and the boy sees a brief vision of his father years later as he graduates from high school.
Doctor Sleep – portrayed by Ewan McGregor ; Roger Dale Floyd
Other
The Shining – miniseries, portrayed by Courtland Mead ; Wil Horneff
The Shining – opera, portrayed by Alejandro Vega
Characterization
''The Shining''
Danny Torrance in The Shining is one of several child characters in Stephen King's early fiction who deal with parental abandonment or the fear of it; other characters include Carrie White in Carrie and Charlene "Charlie" McGee in Firestarter. Heidi Strengell, in Dissecting Stephen King, says, "In King's view children, like Danny Torrance, are able to deal with fantasy and terror on their own terms better than adults because of the size of their imaginative capacity and their unique position in life." The reference guide Characters in 20th-Century Literature wrote, "Some critics complain that Danny displays an improbable maturity for a child his age." Author Dale Bailey, writing about haunted houses, said King's writing of Danny, a psychic in a haunted setting, borrowed the link made by Shirley Jackson and Richard Matheson in their works. Bailey perceives Danny as having ambivalence toward his father; he loves Jack, but through his "shining" he can see how emotionally disturbed his father is. King said there was evidence of parallels between Danny and his father, "Danny, like Jack himself, may someday fall into behavioral patterns of the fatherhe both loves and fears." In the novel The Shining, Danny shares his power of "the shining" with several strangers, where in the film adaptation, he is secretive about it, even when confiding in fellow psychic Dick Hallorann. In the novel, Danny has an extraordinary intelligence, a large vocabulary, is attached to his father and is able to foresee all of Hotel Overlook's horrors. In contrast, in the film, he is portrayed as an ordinary boy with only the extraordinary power and has visions that change with events that happen at the hotel. Academic Greg Jenkins says the primary reason for Danny being less talkative was the difficulty for a child actor to memorize lines, but he said the minimal dialogue also created more suspense. Danny has an "imaginary friend" named Tony that warns him of danger and has been portrayed in different ways. The Dissolve said King's novel suggests Tony as "a part of Danny, a piece of future adult potential made manifest". In Kubrick's film, Tony is only shown as imaginary, "his own crooked finger in an eerie, croaking voice". The TV miniseries, also by King, has Tony as a "glowing, flying, transparent teenager", later revealed to be a future version of himself. Bailey said of the incarnation of Tony in the original novel was "a projection of Danny's mind, giving voice to anxieties which otherwise transcend his understanding", citing as evidence the interlinking of the male Torrances' names: grandfather Mark Anthony Torrance, John Daniel "Jack" Torrance, and Daniel Anthony Torrance.
''Doctor Sleep''
Stephen King said he had been asked what happened to Danny Torrance after the events of The Shining, and he decided to write its sequel Doctor Sleep, which portrays Danny as an adult. In the novel, Danny is depicted as an alcoholic drifter who is haunted by the memory of his father. The Guardian said of the portrayal of Danny, "It... captures the reality of a recovering alcoholic, a state with which King is intimately familiar." King said he wanted to depict Danny as avoiding being like his parents and trying to escape his roots.
