10 Stephen King Fan Theories That Make Appalling Sense
5. The Shining’s Jack Torrance Wrote Apt Pupil
In Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of The
Shining we don’t see much of the book that Jack Torrance is supposedly writing
apart from that it pretty much consists of the words “All work and no play
makes Jack a dull boy” repeated over and over.
But in King’s novel, we’re given a little more detail. It’s actually a five-act play called The Little School that mimics the circumstances that saw Jack fired from his position at a New England prep school for beating up a student and focuses on a character named Denker who is the sadistic headmaster of – funnily enough – a New England prep school and the antagonistic relationship he shares with one of his pupils Gary Benson.
Diehard King fans might be thinking that the name Denker sounds familiar and it should. Arthur Denker is the alias of Kurt Dussander, the Nazi war criminal at the heart of King’s novella Apt Pupil who forms an uneasy relationship with high school student and sociopath in the making Todd Bowden. Hmm.
Is it possible that Jack Torrance wrote Apt Pupil, or at least conjured up its characters? It’s not that far-fetched a fan theory considering that the multiverse that King has created is known for its interconnectedness and overlapping realities.
Interestingly, in Apt Pupil Kurt Dussander namedrops a wife-killing banker named Dufresne who helped him purchase stocks under an assumed name. He’s only talking about Shawshank Redemption hero (or possibly sociopathic murderer) Andy Dufresne! Which could mean that Dufresne and Co are also the concoction of Jack Torrance’s mind.
It’s all too much to take in.