Jack disables the snowmobile

Jack Torrance disables the snowmobile in the equipment shed, a decisive act of sabotage that eliminates the family's only practical means of escape from the Overlook Hotel and seals their fate for the winter. The decision crystallizes Jack's internal conflict between his duty to his family and his growing, possessive attachment to the hotel, a conflict that the Overlook itself manipulates to claim him as its own.

Discovery and Initial Resistance

On the morning of November 29, Jack enters the equipment shed with the stated intention of getting the snowmobile running so he can take Wendy and Danny down to Sidewinder. The machine, a Bombardier Skidoo with a bright yellow body and black racing stripes, immediately repels him. He sees it as a "monstrous mechanized wasp," a creature that would shatter the winter's silence and pollute the air. His resentment is visceral: he has always disliked snowmobiles, viewing them as grotesque toys of the fossil fuel age. He recalls a newspaper story about a boy decapitated by a chain while riding one at night. Standing before the machine, he feels a wave of resentment, a "gray, sullen wave" pushing up his throat, and thinks that if it weren't for Danny, he would take "great pleasure" in smashing it to pieces with a mallet.

The Search and the Reluctant Discovery

Despite his reluctance, Jack methodically works through the steps to make the snowmobile operational. He checks the gas tank, finding a small amount of fuel. He installs four sparkplugs from a box marked "Skid." He searches the shelves for a battery, initially failing to find one, and feels a wave of relief, believing he can honestly tell Wendy the machine cannot be fixed. He begins to whistle "Red River Valley" and kicks the snowmobile in passing. But then he discovers a box, also marked "Skid," hidden in a corner behind a stool. Inside is the battery. His relief evaporates. He feels that "something—luck, fate, providence—had been trying to save him," but that his own bad luck has stepped back in. He briefly considers pretending he never saw the box, dismissing it as an hallucination, but he cannot sustain the lie.

The Act of Sabotage

Jack installs the battery, attaching the cables with a small wrench. The job is done; the snowmobile should now work. But instead of preparing to leave, he stands looking at the machine, his mind churning. He thinks of the future: arriving in Sidewinder with sixty dollars and no job, the prospect of welfare, the humiliation of explaining to Al Shockley that they had to leave because of ghosts. He thinks of the Overlook, which he now believes wants him to stay. He feels that the hotel has "picked him to be its Boswell." The thought of leaving feels like the wrong decision, a betrayal of his own potential. He then leans over the engine compartment and yanks off the magneto, the part that generates the spark for ignition. It comes off "with sickening ease." He walks to the back door of the shed, opens it, and flings the magneto as far as he can into the deep snow. He watches it disappear, then feels a profound sense of peace. He closes the door firmly and goes back outside, where he stops to have a snowball fight with Danny.

Consequences and Significance

Jack's act of sabotage is the point of no return for the Torrance family. By destroying the snowmobile, he eliminates the only viable escape route before the worst of the winter storms isolate them completely. The decision is not a moment of madness but a calculated choice, made in full awareness of its consequences. It represents Jack's surrender to the Overlook's influence, a conscious prioritization of his own ambitions—his play, his research, his desire to be the hotel's chronicler—over the safety of his wife and son. The act is a direct betrayal of his promise to Wendy, made the night before, that he would get the machine running and take them away. It is the moment Jack ceases to be a protector and becomes a willing accomplice in the family's entrapment, setting the stage for the violence and horror that follow.