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The blood represents the blood of individual and collective sacrifices. The Overlook Hotel is built on a Native American burial ground. The blood that issues supernaturally from the "sentient" hotel is the blood of various victims: the mass murder of the Native American genocide, the blood of the murder victims (two girls and a mother--all women) of the former "caretaker" of the Overlook Hotel, the blood of the African-American male (as represented by Scruthers), and symbolically, the blood of the moribund nuclear American family (which foreshadows the death of Jack Torrence/Nicholson).

Shelly Duval is only the character who sees the blood (which is also her own). The blood represents the end of her role as submissive and codependent wife. Afterward, she leaves the Overlook Hotel, the "haunted abode" of American patriarchal and imperial power, and rescues her child. The "eternal return" of patriarchal violence is broken. Thus, the blood in the elevator is the by-product of violent, disciplinary authority from the family to US state power.

From "Psycho" to "The Shining", the hotel-of-murder trope reflects the societal change from furthering the madness of Oedipal power to exposing and ending it.

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12y ago

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