Jack deals with wasps' nest

On October 20, while reshingling the Overlook Hotel's west roof, Jack Torrance thrust his hand into a section of rotted flashing and was stung by a large wall wasp. The nest, nearly two feet through its center, was tucked into the space between the old flashing and the roof undercoating. The wasps, rendered sluggish by the fall temperatures, were the big mean ones, not yellow jackets. Jack scrambled up the roof, examined his swelling right index finger, and reflected that if Ullman had hired the job done in the height of summer, the workman would have gotten one hell of a surprise. He saw the nest as a symbol of his own life—a hidden, stinging danger that could erupt without warning, just as his alcoholism and temper had erupted in the past. He went down to the equipment shed, retrieved a bug bomb, and returned to the roof to exterminate the nest, believing he was finally taking control, that he could sting back.

The Bug Bomb and the Return of the Wasps

Jack followed the directions on the bug bomb, saw the thick white smoke puff out, and two hours later shook a drift of small dead bodies out of the hole. He brought the nest down and gave it to Danny, who placed it on a plastic plate by his bed. That night, Danny awoke from a nightmare of being chased by a figure with a roque mallet to find three wasps crawling on his left hand. They stung him again and again. Jack and Wendy rushed in; Jack used Danny's pillow to slap the wasps off, then ran to the kitchen for a Pyrex bowl to trap the nest. Wendy killed the remaining wasps with a coloring book, but one stung her wrist. The doctor later counted eleven separate stings on Danny's hand. Jack took Polaroid pictures of the swelling, planning to sue the manufacturer, but the lawyer later told him the case was doubtful. The nest, trapped under the bowl, was crawling with fifty to a hundred live wasps. Jack, stunned, took the bowl outside to the milk platform, where the twenty-five-degree cold would kill them by morning. He locked the door behind him, his mind echoing with the thought: They had come back.

The Wasp Incident as a Turning Point

The wasp attack shattered the family's fragile sense of security. Wendy, who had been knitting and listening to Bach, was jolted from her sleep by Jack's roar. Danny's hand throbbed, and he developed a small headache. Jack, wiping his lips with his handkerchief, felt a superstitious dread: he had killed the wasps, but they had come back. The incident deepened Wendy's fear of the hotel and of Jack's temper, which she saw returning in his nervous habits—the constant wiping of his lips, the chewing of Excedrin. For Danny, the wasps became a symbol of the hotel's malevolent power, a living contradiction of nature's laws. The attack also triggered a deeper crisis: Danny's subsequent trance in the bathroom, where he muttered about "roque" and "redrum," led Jack to shout at him, "Don't stutter!"—a moment that horrified Jack and reminded him of his own violent past. The wasps' nest, once a trophy, became a harbinger of the hotel's growing influence, a sign that the Overlook was not a place of healing but of entrapment.

Thematic Significance: The Wasp as Metaphor

The wasps' nest functions as a central metaphor for Jack's internal and external struggles. Jack himself reflects that the nest could serve as "a workable symbol for what he had been through"—the sudden, irrational eruption of violence and addiction that had destroyed his career and nearly his family. He compares his own temper to sticking his hand into "The Great Wasps' Nest of Life," where a single sting could trigger a chain reaction of destruction. The wasps also represent the hotel's insidious power: they return after being killed, just as the hotel's ghosts and malevolent forces return after being suppressed. The incident foreshadows the greater horrors to come, as the hotel's influence grows and Jack's grip on reality weakens. The wasps, like the hotel, are a hidden danger that stings without warning, leaving lasting wounds that cannot be easily healed.