Snowshoes

Snowshoes serve as the Torrance family's primary means of navigating the deep snow that isolates the Overlook Hotel after the great storm. Jack Torrance, who had not used snowshoes since his boyhood in Berlin, New Hampshire, retaught himself quickly and found a pair to fit each family member, though Danny's pair was quite outsized. The snowshoes allowed them to venture outside on sunny days, often wearing two sets of clothing, and to circle the hotel with Danny's Flexible Flyer sled in various permutations: Danny riding while his parents pulled, Daddy riding while Wendy and Danny tried to pull, or Wendy riding alone while her menfolk pulled and puffed white vapor like drayhorses. These excursions were a compulsive attempt to break the hotel's confinement, but the whooping wind made their laughter seem tinny and forced.

Danny's Struggle with Snowshoes

Danny found snowshoeing almost as hard on his ankles as skating, because he had to keep clearing the lacings. Every five minutes or so he had to stop with his legs spread and the snowshoes flat on the snow to rest them. Despite the difficulty, Jack was pleased with Danny's progress, saying that by February Danny would be skipping circles around both of them. When Danny decided to go to the playground on the afternoon of the hedge animal attack, he strapped on his snowshoes on the front porch and made his way downhill without needing to rest, the downhill grade making the journey easy. But when he had to flee back to the hotel, the snowshoes became a hindrance. He concentrated on operating them with slow, flat strides, trying not to lift his foot too high or lose his balance, but his fear made him clumsy. His snowshoes crossed and he plunged forward into the snow, arms waving uselessly. He struggled to get the snowshoes under him, overbalanced backward, and lay looking at the sky, thinking it would be simpler to just give up. He remembered his father's voice telling him not to fight the snowshoes but to walk on them like they were his own feet, and little by little the rhythm began to come back, though his fear had exhausted him.

The Snowshoes as a Source of Terror

During his flight from the hedge animals, Danny's snowshoes became a source of terror and vulnerability. When he reached the porch steps, he fell on them, screaming without sound, and scrambled up on his hands and knees, snowshoes clattering and askew behind him. The snowshoes had also caused him to fall earlier when he tried to step over the playground fence; one snowshoe caught on a fence post, and he almost fell flat. The snowshoes, meant to enable movement, instead trapped him in moments of extreme danger, making him an easy target for the pursuing hedge creatures. After the attack, the clotted snowshoes lay on the rug just inside the big double doors of the lobby, a discarded reminder of the failed escape.

The Snowshoes as a Symbol of Isolation

Beyond their practical and terrifying uses, the snowshoes symbolize the family's isolation. They are a tool that allows them to move within their prison but not to escape it. Jack used snowshoes to check the boiler and to clear snow from the porch, but the truly heroic drifts lay against the Overlook's west side, some towering to a height of twenty feet, and beyond them the ground was scoured bare by the constant windflow. The snowshoes could not overcome the fundamental fact that the road was closed and the family was cut off. When Jack considered snowshoeing Danny down to Sidewinder, he realized it would mean camping out for one, two, maybe three nights, building a travois to carry supplies and bedrolls, and risking death if the weather forecast was wrong. The snowshoes, in this context, were not a means of rescue but a measure of how desperate and impossible any escape would be.