Since the family assigned to look over the hotel crashed on the way there and never made it, then the reality is, there's no one in the hotel after the real hotel manager (represented by Stuart Ullman in the dream) and the rest of the staff have left there for the winter. Susan's knowledge of this fact is represented in her dream by the sequence of events in which the ranger station radios the hotel to check on things, and no one answers the radio, after Hallorann tries unsuccessfully to call the hotel, and then calls the station. The real manager of the hotel would, of course, have known that no one showed up on closing day. He simply left the hotel at the end of the season with no one there, since he knew there wasn't enough time to get someone else to look over it before snowy weather set in.
Dick Hallorann (above left) phones the ranger station (above right), and expresses concern that no one answered when he called the Overlook.
Later in Susan's dream, after Hallorann arrives in Denver from Florida, he calls Durkin's garage from the Denver airport, and tells Durkin that the people hired to take care of the Overlook turned out to be incompetent. In terms of reality, 'Hallorann' doesn't realize that the reason no one answered the phone when he called the hotel from Florida, is because no one is in the hotel. When Hallorann goes to the hotel and is confronted and killed by Jack Torrance, this is only a manifestation of the fantasy aspect of 'dream-logic', since it cannot, of course, be the case that no one is in the hotel, while at the same time, Jack (and his family) are there.
Hallorann (above left) calls Larry Durkin (above right) from the airport in Denver.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Depiction of an 'evil Trinity' in the movie
In the dream being depicted in The Shining, there is an 'evil Trinity' whereby Jack represents the Father; Danny represents the Son; and Dick Hallorann represents Holy Spirit. The fact that Hallorann is black symbolizes that he represents a corrupted Holy Spirit. To see how it is that there can be an evil Trinity (more properly, an evil triad) corresponding to the Holy Trinity, we turn to Jung's "The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales": "Among the alchemists we can see clearly how the divine Trinity has its counterpart in a lower, chthonic triad (similar to Dante's three-headed devil). This represents a principle which, by reason of its symbolism, betrays affinities with evil, though it is by no means certain that it expresses nothing but evil. Everything points rather to the fact that evil, or its familiar symbolism, belongs to the family of figures which describe the dark, nocturnal, lower, chthonic element. In this symbolism the lower stands to the higher as a correspondence in reverse; that is to say it is conceived, like the upper, as a triad."[a]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dick Hallorann (above left) and Jack Torrance (above right) each represent different aspects of Susan Robertson's animus.
Susan Robertson's split animus
Back in part 2 of the analysis, we observed that in Jungian psychology, the animus is the unconscious masculine component in women; also recall that we have commented on the psychological duality within Susan Robertson, as represented in her dream by, for example, the prominence of mirrors and of 'doubles' (the twins, the two boilers, etc.). One manifestation of Susan's duality is that she has a kind of 'split' animus - her animus is broken up into two 'parts' or aspects, represented by Dick Hallorann and Jack Torrance, respectively. Hallorann represents that part of Susan's animus that is the mediator between her unconscious and her conscious mind, and the fact that he is black indicates that he also represents that part of Susan's animus that has been cross-contaminated with contents from her shadow (i.e., her dark side). Since Hallorann represents the Holy Spirit, his 'contamination' suggests the idea of 'corruption' of the Christian Holy Spirit (as mentioned above, his being black itself suggests this), and the fact that Jack kills him represents the death of the Holy Spirit, a topic which will be discussed later in the analysis.
Since Hallorann's first name is Dick, signifying the male sex organ, he represents the overtly masculine component of Susan's animus. Jack, on the other hand, since he is a writer, represents that part of Susan's animus that is intellectual.
a. Jung, C.G. "The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairytales" in The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Vol. 9, part 1. Princeton University Press, 1969. para. 425.
