How Kubrick Used The Shining To Push Symbolism To Its Limit And Hint At The Native American Genocide

At first glance, The Shining looks like a film about isolation, psychological collapse, and a family trapped in a haunted hotel. But Stanley Kubrick was not the kind of director who filled his frames with random detail. With him, the walls matter, the carpets matter, the colors matter, the sounds matter, and even the things sitting quietly in the background matter.

When it comes to Stanley Kubrick, it is almost impossible to look at any frame as if it were just an image. If you read these two earlier pieces, you will understand exactly what I mean. He was obsessed with detail.  ( Production Notes That Will Make You Respect Dr. Strangelove Even More >> ) and ( Little-Known Details About Stanley Kubrick’s Final Film Eyes Wide Shut >>)

My reading is simple: The Shining can be read as a symbolic film about America’s genocide of Native Americans. Kubrick does not announce that reading directly, but he plants it everywhere. Once you notice it, the film stops being just a horror story about one man going insane.

The Overlook Hotel Is America Built On Buried Violence

The name of the hotel already says a lot. “Overlook” does not only suggest elevation or a scenic view. It also means to ignore, to pass over, to refuse to really see what is there. That is exactly what America did with the Native American genocide. It buried it, cleaned it up, softened it, and kept going as if the blood underneath no longer counted.

The film makes this even harder to ignore by telling us that the hotel was built on a Native American burial ground. Kubrick is not being vague there. The hotel is a polished American structure standing directly on top of a grave. That is not just backstory. That is the whole point.

Blue, Red, And Yellow Work Like The Film’s Secret Language

The film’s dominant colors are blue, red, and yellow, and they feel too deliberate to dismiss. Blue can be read as denial, suppression, and the refusal to confront what has been done. It fits perfectly with the idea of “overlooking” history.

Red is blood, violence, massacre, and the visual return of slaughter. It keeps surfacing like a stain that the film refuses to wash away.

Yellow feels like warning, danger, and approaching poison. It is the color of something bad arriving, something bad already present, something bad that cannot be stopped. Kubrick uses these colors so carefully that they begin to function like a second script under the dialogue.

Jack’s Yellow Car Looks Like The White Man Entering The Continent

At the beginning of the film, Jack drives a yellow car across the mountains toward the hotel. Read symbolically, he looks like the white man entering a land he will occupy, dominate, and stain with violence. The journey feels bigger than one father taking a job. It feels historical.

And once he gets there, Native American imagery is all over the place. You see it on the walls, around the fireplace, in Wendy’s clothing, in the carpet patterns, and even on the canned goods stacked inside the hotel. Kubrick keeps pushing those details into the frame because he wants the audience surrounded by the buried history of the place.

Danny’s Tricycle, The Carpets, And The Sound Design Are Not Random

One of the most unsettling recurring details in the film is Danny riding his tricycle through the hotel. The sound of the wheels constantly changes as he moves across different surfaces, and that alone creates tension. But the effect becomes even stranger when he reaches the Native-patterned carpets. The sound shifts, softens, and changes right on top of those designs, as if the film itself is reacting to them.

That is the kind of detail that would mean nothing in a lesser film. In Kubrick’s hands, it feels planted. It feels deliberate. It feels like one more reminder that the hotel’s silence is covering something ugly.

Jack’s Violence Is Framed Like A Return Of Buried History

When Jack completely gives himself over to violence and moves toward Wendy with the axe, the film stops feeling like a simple story about one man losing his mind. The pounding music behind him carries a force that feels ritualistic, ancient, and accusatory. It does not play like ordinary horror scoring. It feels like history pounding its way back into the room.

Even smaller details support that reading. Jack throws a tennis ball against a wall marked with Native-style motifs. Kubrick places the image of violence, repetition, and frustration right against those patterns. Nothing about that feels accidental.

Jack’s descent becomes much uglier when read this way. He is not simply going mad in isolation. He begins to look like a culture that senses the truth of its own crimes, cannot face them, and turns psychotic instead.

Wendy, Jack, And Danny Form A Symbolic American Family

This reading becomes even harsher when you look at the family itself. Wendy can be read as Native America. She is cornered, hunted, terrified, and trapped inside a space already claimed by male violence.

Jack is America. Not just an abusive husband and not just a madman, but the America that butchered Native people with axes, buried the memory of it, and still talked about itself as if it were building something noble. He is entitlement, domination, destruction, and self-justification all at once.

Danny is the next American generation, born inside the aftermath, forced to absorb fear, silence, and inherited violence before he is even old enough to understand it.

That is why Jack’s attitude matters so much. He keeps acting like he is engaged in something serious, important, and meaningful. He demands silence. He demands obedience. He snaps at Wendy as if she is interrupting some grand act of creation. But the truth is much uglier. He is doing absolutely nothing. He is not building. He is not creating. He is not producing anything worth protecting. He is just performing importance while carrying violence inside him.

That is what makes him such a brutal symbol. He behaves like the great American builder while embodying the great American destroyer.

Hallorann’s Death Makes The Film Even Darker

Dick Hallorann’s death also gains another meaning in this reading. He comes in from the outside, senses the danger, tries to help, and is killed almost immediately. He does not get a heroic rescue. He barely gets a chance to exist inside the space before the violence wipes him out.

That makes his death feel colder than a normal shock scene. The hotel does not only consume the people already trapped inside it. It also destroys Black outsiders who step into its machinery. The structure is violent all the way through.

And the image becomes even uglier because Hallorann is killed in a space where that red monkey figure is present. Read symbolically, it makes the scene even nastier. The suggestion becomes hard to ignore: this is a system of violence so deep that even those coming from outside, even those trying to intervene, can be swallowed by it and thrown away.

Kubrick Does Not Explain The Symbolism Because He Wants You To Feel It

What makes The Shining so powerful is that Kubrick never stops the film to explain any of this. He does not turn it into a lecture. He trusts the set design, the colors, the sounds, the repetitions, and the character dynamics to do the work.

That is why the film changes so much on rewatch. Once this reading clicks, The Shining stops being just a film about a haunted hotel or a violent father. It becomes a horror film about a nation built on blood, denial, and the refusal to face what lies underneath its own foundations.

Final Thoughts

For me, this is what makes The Shining so much bigger than a standard horror classic.

Kubrick is not just filming madness. He is filming a civilization built on buried slaughter. The Overlook is America pretending not to see. Jack is America turning violent rather than facing truth. Wendy is the hunted victim inside that structure. Danny is the next generation inheriting its damage. Hallorann is the outsider destroyed by the same machine. And the Native imagery spread across the film is there to make sure the buried crime never fully disappears from the frame.

There are probably more details in the film than most people will ever catch in one viewing. That is part of its power. But once you start seeing this layer, the movie is no longer the same movie.

At that point, The Shining stops looking like a story about one family in one hotel. It starts looking like Kubrick turning America’s buried violence into horror.