Above left: The red, white, and blue clothing worn by Stuart Ullman represents Freemasonry. Above right: The red and white color combination of this bathroom represents hermaphroditism. In alchemy, the hermaphroditic Hermes is born from a union of Red King with White Queen. (This union is sometimes called the chemical marriage, which, speaking alchemically, is what Wendy and Danny are to undergo; i.e., the conjunction of Sol and Luna, as discussed earlier.) The red is associated with the rubedo and the white with the albedo. In Greek mythology, Hermaphroditus was the two-sexed child of Aphrodite and Hermes (in Roman mythology, Venus and Mercury respectively). Recall that Wendy represents Venus and Danny represents Mercury. Thus, the foregoing is consistent with what was said earlier, about Wendy desiring to conceive a child with Danny.
Above left: Hallorann lying on green pillows. Green is a color sometimes associated with the Holy Spirit;[a] as we said earlier, Hallorann represents this. Hallorann can here 'see' or sense, that a horrible event is about to take place in the hotel (i.e., the room 237 occurrence involving Jack's interaction with an old, partially decayed woman, as shown further below). Above right: The lighted green bathroom in room 237. The green here represents the dark side of Wendy's (and thus Susan's) Jungian Self. The idea behind Kubrick's color symbolism, at least insofar as use of green, is that lighted, 'shiny' green represents the presence of evil, whereas 'plain' or deep green, e.g., that as used in dyes, represents the forces of good. However, as shown below, this latter kind of green can be associated with other colors to symbolize something negative.
Above: With regard to the meaning of the room 237 scene, the symbolism of the room's carpet colors (in the portion of the carpet that appears as shown above) is as follows: The green halo-shaped bands in the repeating pattern represent the Holy Spirit, which is 'present' in this scene by virtue of the fact that Dick Hallorann, who himself represents the Holy Spirit individually, can 'see' or sense the horror of the events taking place in the room; and the black signifies the alchemical nigredo, which is associated with, among other things, chaos, and putrefaction and decomposition. According to the online Encyclopedia Britannica 'Chaos (Ancient Greek religion)' page, "The modern meaning of the word [chaos] is derived from Ovid, who saw Chaos as the original disordered and formless mass, from which the maker of the Cosmos produced the ordered universe. This concept of Chaos also was applied to the interpretation of the creation story in the bible's Genesis 1 (to which it is not native) by the early Church Fathers."[b] Because of the association of the cosmological concept of Chaos with the creation of the world in the biblical book of Genesis (where "the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters" [Gen. 1:2, King James Version; emphasis not in original], then recalling from above that the nigredo is associated with putrefaction and decomposition, the black in the carpet pattern also indicates that the scene in the room has to do with death or corruption of the Holy Spirit itself. Recall that the room 237 scenario includes a view of Danny in a state of extreme anxiety, holding his breath or gagging (below left screencap), while he 'sees' his father interacting with the decaying woman (below right); also recall the connection of breath to the Holy Spirit.
Noting that the purple portion of the carpet pattern is roughly in the shape of a phallus, and recalling from earlier in the analysis the dactyl symbolism and the Faust metaphor (which connects 'Tony' with the phallus and thus, with creative and intuitive faculties), and also recalling the finger symbolism (the index finger corresponds to Jupiter), the phallus in the pattern can also be taken as a finger, with purple being a color sometimes associated with the planet Jupiter. Therefore, the purple phallus/finger in the carpet pattern also indicates the 'presence' of the god Jupiter, whom as we've said, is represented by Danny. What we have here is the metaphorical phallus inside the womb, the matrix, symbolizing the fact that Danny has had sex with his own mother. The tie-in with the Faust metaphor indicates that Danny's libido, which is at first directed toward his mother, will, later in his life, express itself in processes requiring creative and/or intuitive abilities, for example, in art, or in a superior ability to empathize with others.
a. "In ecclesiastical symbolism, green is the color of the Holy Ghost..." (--Jung, Emma and Marie-Louise Von Franz, The Grail Legend, Trans. Andrea Dykes, Princeton University Press, 1998, Google Books, p. 165, URL = books.google.com.)
b. 'Chaos'. Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2015. Web. 17 May. 2015. URL = http://www.britannica.com/topic/Chaos-ancient-Greek-religion.
