Prominent Allusions in The Shinning

King threads allusions to other Gothic texts throughout The Shining; the following classic fairytale by Perrault and short story by Poe are two such texts that make numerous appearances throughout the novel:

"Blue Beard"- a fairytale written by French author, Charles Perrault (1697) tells the story of a young bride who has married the older and wealthier Blue Beard.  In order to determine his wife's fidelity, Blue Beard leaves her with the keys to every room in the castle, forbidding her only from entering one. He leaves his wife alone in the castle for long periods of time, sometimes weeks on end, to test the full measure of her restraint against curiosity. However, eventually the mysterious secret behind the room gets the better of her strict obedience and she enters the chamber. What she finds horrifies and threatens her destruction... 

"The Masque of the Red Death," by Edgar Allan Poe (1842), begins with the intelligence of a horrible plague sweeping the region of the tale, threatening the nearly instant bloody dissolution of its victims. However, the Prince of the region, believing himself to be immune to the common pestilence, aptly named the Red Death, decides to hold a masked ball, seemingly in defiance of the plague and its reach into his halls. The gathering proceeds with every extravagance available to Prince Prospero's generous coffers, and all seems well until, as the large ebony clock of the hall ticks towards midnight, a strange and unidentified guest joins the party, whose costume resembles with clinical accuracy the image of a corpse...

"And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revelers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripod expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all."