Wendy comes outside and reminds Danny that his father won’t be home for hours, but Danny refuses to go inside. If Jack doesn’t check the boiler, Watson says, Jack’s family will “wake up on the fuckin moon.” Back at the Torrances’ apartment in Boulder, Colorado, Danny sits on the curb waiting for Jack to return. The damper must be periodically hit, or the gauge will keep rising. The thermostat “creeps,” Watson says, and there isn’t an automatic shutoff. He tells Jack that he must check the boiler twice a day.

Jack snaps out of his thoughts to the sound of Watson’s voice. When Jack lost his temper with Danny a few years back-Danny went into Jack’s study and spilled beer all over the pages of Jack’s play-he grabbed Danny by the arm, intending to spank him, but Jack was drunk and broke Danny’s arm instead. “Seclusion can be damaging,” Ullman says to Jack and shows him to the basement to meet Watson, the maintenance man.Īs Watson familiarizes Jack with the furnace and the boiler, Jack thinks about what Ullman said about losing his temper. Grady was a drunk, and while he was alone at the hotel with his wife and two young daughters, he went crazy and killed his family and himself.

Ullman doesn’t look convinced and tells Jack about the previous winter caretaker, a man named Grady. Plus, Jack will have time to work on the play he is writing. Jack hasn’t had a drink in over a year, and his family-his wife, Wendy, and their five-year-old son, Danny-are looking forward to spending the winter together at the hotel. Jack assures Ullman that he won’t be sorry.

Ullman knows all about Jack’s history-about his alcoholism and how he “lost his temper” at his job back in Vermont and got fired-and if it weren’t for Al Shockley, Jack’s friend and an important man on the Overlook Hotel’s Board of Directors, Ullman would never hire Jack as the hotel’s winter caretaker. Jack Torrance looks across the desk at Stuart Ullman and thinks he looks like an “officious little prick.” Although, to be fair, Jack would likely hate anyone given the circumstances of the job interview.

The shining king