SPOILERS: Alternate ending for Doctor Sleep

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eatabagel

New Member
Nov 13, 2009
3
1
I don't know that Dan could fully come clean. Part of "what he knew" about the situation was stuff that he couldn't possibly know. Which would involve him explaining more about the shining.
 
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skimom2

Just moseyin' through...
Oct 9, 2013
15,683
92,168
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I actually had also...
felt that Dan didn't quite get there when he was 'coming clean' about what his bottom was. But then, I'd wondered whether this was just another part of the alcoholic condition? The constant battle with getting up and staying up?
I think you've got it, Flake. I never got that Dan was cavalier about
the baby; his despair over the $ was part and parcel of how low he felt--it was representative of how small he'd become in that moment. It didn't seem for a minute to me that he cared more for the $ than a life,
but that is what he could handle without coming completely apart.
 
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EMTP513

Well-Known Member
Oct 31, 2012
503
1,923
As much as I enjoyed Doctor Sleep, I have to say I was disappointed with the ending. I understand King is a fan of AA, but by the denouement, Doctor Sleep had turned into an instructional manual for it. It just doesn't ring true to me, and King says clearly in On Writing that writers always need to tell the truth.

I know how presumptuous this is, but hey, it's a message board. So here's what I think the truth was. Instead of finally admitting the incident with Deenie at his anniversary AA meeting, Dan remains quiet. Later, the teenaged Abra is punished for getting drunk (not just "sipping" alcohol) at a party and breaks the plates. Dan meets with her and shows her his memories of his father's decline at the Overlook. Then he shares the ending and aftermath of The Shining and explains why he began drinking in the first place. Finally he shows her the memory of Deenie's baby and the "canny." She tells him to forgive himself and tearfully vows never to drink again.

OK, so let me have it for second-guessing the master!!


I think that would entail knowing what the hell you're talking about in the first place, but I'd never be able to give someone a virtual tongue-lashing over it anyway. And I don't believe he's a "master."
But I'm overly critical of people who misrepresent my profession on the grand scale that he's done so for years. Sometimes he gets it 'so right it's uncanny.' Like when he mentioned that a dying patient was having agonal respirations known as Cheynes-Stokes respirations and represented it with near-perfect clarity.
Other times he creates a scene that indicates he has no idea what would be likely to happen if someone received serious cuts to their wrist. Like when he had the woman in Gerald's game severely cut her own wrist (so seriously that it needed "grafts and all that nasty business.") But then he has her use her injured hand which, if it needed grafts would have serious nerve damage, with which to open the other handcuff. A finer tuned motor skill that nerve damage to her wrist would have rendered not possible.
Anybody who understands Cheynes-Stokes respiration would not under any circumstances ALSO comprehend soft tissue injuries.
I actually HAVE been given the riot act for mentioning some of these things; up, down, sideways and any other direction they chose to flay me over my hypersensitivity to misrepresentation of medical advice in fiction.
Unfortunately I have a really great reason for beCOMing so sensitive to it.

One time we received a call for domestic violence in which the guy had previously read the first scene in Rose Madder where the character beats his wife, moves her to the foot of the stairs and tells EMT's and paramedics that she fell down the stairs and is why she's in the process of losing her baby.
All of which the little EMT's and Paramedics in the story were none the wiser and believed every word he said.
The guy read that scene, beat his own wife mercilessly to end a pregnancy in which he WASN'T getting his royal, God-given male first born child, and told us exactly the same thing the guy in the story told us.
We never would have HAD to read the book to know he was lying, b/c the Method of Injury would have been monumentally inconsistent if you beat a person directly in the abdominal area repeatedly, which WOULDN'T happen from falling down stairs, and blood loss from losing a baby is so abundant you would have been able to find drops of it leading over to the stairs, although I suppose SOME of them would be dumb enough to believe the very FIRST thing they see and NOT check for alternatives.
But neither my supervisor, who's a Senior Paramedic, nor I were included in the list of people who would overlook everything except the immediate "area of injury."
Only brand-new EMT's think that what they see on the surface must be the only thing there is.

I guess you could say that scene "helped" in this case b/c he got caught for doing it, but how do you know he would have ever thought of it if he hadn't read how to do it. Not accusing anybody of anything, just wondering aloud what I thought about all those years ago. It's the GUY'S fault for DOing it, I dislike when people blame anyone other than the criminal for criminal actions, but I wonder anyway. Maybe as some way of searching for an alternative to the truth, which was that the guy didn't want a girl first and beat his wife with a broomstick until she went into premature labor and lost the baby.

I've never met the kind of monsters in fiction that exist in my life under the lights.
 
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I think that would entail knowing what the hell you're talking about in the first place, but I'd never be able to give someone a virtual tongue-lashing over it anyway. And I don't believe he's a "master."
But I'm overly critical of people who misrepresent my profession on the grand scale that he's done so for years. Sometimes he gets it 'so right it's uncanny.' Like when he mentioned that a dying patient was having agonal respirations known as Cheynes-Stokes respirations and represented it with near-perfect clarity.
Other times he creates a scene that indicates he has no idea what would be likely to happen if someone received serious cuts to their wrist. Like when he had the woman in Gerald's game severely cut her own wrist (so seriously that it needed "grafts and all that nasty business.") But then he has her use her injured hand which, if it needed grafts would have serious nerve damage, with which to open the other handcuff. A finer tuned motor skill that nerve damage to her wrist would have rendered not possible.
Anybody who understands Cheynes-Stokes respiration would not under any circumstances ALSO comprehend soft tissue injuries.
I actually HAVE been given the riot act for mentioning some of these things; up, down, sideways and any other direction they chose to flay me over my hypersensitivity to misrepresentation of medical advice in fiction.
Unfortunately I have a really great reason for beCOMing so sensitive to it.

One time we received a call for domestic violence in which the guy had previously read the first scene in Rose Madder where the character beats his wife, moves her to the foot of the stairs and tells EMT's and paramedics that she fell down the stairs and is why she's in the process of losing her baby.
All of which the little EMT's and Paramedics in the story were none the wiser and believed every word he said.
The guy read that scene, beat his own wife mercilessly to end a pregnancy in which he WASN'T getting his royal, God-given male first born child, and told us exactly the same thing the guy in the story told us.
We never would have HAD to read the book to know he was lying, b/c the Method of Injury would have been monumentally inconsistent if you beat a person directly in the abdominal area repeatedly, which WOULDN'T happen from falling down stairs, and blood loss from losing a baby is so abundant you would have been able to find drops of it leading over to the stairs, although I suppose SOME of them would be dumb enough to believe the very FIRST thing they see and NOT check for alternatives.
But neither my supervisor, who's a Senior Paramedic, nor I were included in the list of people who would overlook everything except the immediate "area of injury."
Only brand-new EMT's think that what they see on the surface must be the only thing there is.

I guess you could say that scene "helped" in this case b/c he got caught for doing it, but how do you know he would have ever thought of it if he hadn't read how to do it. Not accusing anybody of anything, just wondering aloud what I thought about all those years ago. It's the GUY'S fault for DOing it, I dislike when people blame anyone other than the criminal for criminal actions, but I wonder anyway. Maybe as some way of searching for an alternative to the truth, which was that the guy didn't want a girl first and beat his wife with a broomstick until she went into premature labor and lost the baby.

I've never met the kind of monsters in fiction that exist in my life under the lights.


I kind of have no idea what this post has to do with the alternate ending to Dr. Sleep.
 
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Neesy

#1 fan (Annie Wilkes cousin) 1st cousin Mom's side
May 24, 2012
61,289
239,271
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
I kind of have no idea what this post has to do with the alternate ending to Dr. Sleep.
Me neither - it does seem to be a bit of a rant and as far as blaming Mr. King for some lunatic's wife having a miscarriage - wow - that's a stretch! :umm:
(it does sound like she is upset that someone caused a miscarriage simply because they did not want a girl rather than a boy)
 

opundo

Active Member
Sep 25, 2011
38
87
Derry, Maine
As much as I enjoyed Doctor Sleep, I have to say I was disappointed with the ending. I understand King is a fan of AA, but by the denouement, Doctor Sleep had turned into an instructional manual for it. It just doesn't ring true to me, and King says clearly in On Writing that writers always need to tell the truth.

I know how presumptuous this is, but hey, it's a message board. So here's what I think the truth was. Instead of finally admitting the incident with Deenie at his anniversary AA meeting, Dan remains quiet. Later, the teenaged Abra is punished for getting drunk (not just "sipping" alcohol) at a party and breaks the plates. Dan meets with her and shows her his memories of his father's decline at the Overlook. Then he shares the ending and aftermath of The Shining and explains why he began drinking in the first place. Finally he shows her the memory of Deenie's baby and the "canny." She tells him to forgive himself and tearfully vows never to drink again.

OK, so let me have it for second-guessing the master!!
I believe it's one of the 12 steps.