Mr Torrance

To me, The Shining is less about a guy being driven to madness and more about a crazy guy being stripped away for what he really is. The whole film has an otherworldly feel that only the master director Stanley Kubrick could create: the pacing, the tone, the cold delivery of many of the actors. It's like the Overlook is a drug slowly working down your defenses until you have no filters left, and there's only the real you (much like another drug in the movie).

You could argue that the hotel is a metaphor for bringing out who you really are. Jack was always that way. He was always there, he was always the caretaker. It just took a diabolical something to bring it out.