Danny Torrance, who is often called “Doc”, is the son of Jack and Wendy Torrance, in Stephen King’s novel, The Shining.
He is only five years old and has a strong gift that Dick Hallorann calls “the shining,” which is a telepathic ability. He is a likeable, and very bright young boy, who is mature for his few years.
It is Danny’s presence in the hotel, with his special abilities, that seem to activate all the stored-up evils at the Overlook Hotel. Danny has yet learned to control his special abilities. Danny and Dick Hallorann first communicate telepathically when Dick shows Danny and his mother the kitchen.
When the family arrives at the Overlook Hotel, Danny has an instant dislike for the place. Danny begins picking up fragmented flashes of the departing clientele. He wonders why a woman depicted as snobbish and stern would like to get into the bellman’s pants. It is his shining that allows him to recognize the evil that lives in the hotel. He sees figures of the evil people who have died there in the empty hotel rooms. At one point he is attacked by the body of a woman who had committed suicide many years before. He also has a visions of a bloody hand, a menacing figure swinging a mallet, and the word “REDRUM”. He eventually realizes that REDRUM is MURDER spelled backwards, which is when he mentally calls Hallorann for help.
Danny’s father finds a wasps’ nest, and after smoking out the insects hangs the nest in the boy’s room. While Danny is asleep that night the “dead” wasps sting him. This is the first of many unexplained incidents involving Danny and his father.
Danny has an “invisible friend” who is named Tony. This friend warns Danny of approaching danger. Tony is not only Danny’s friend but is actually Danny as he will be in ten years. Tony functions not only to reassure Danny but also to frighten him. Tony warns Danny of Jack’s mental decline.
Danny inspires great love in his father. Even before the family arrives at the Overlook Hotel, Danny reacts to his father’s aberrant behavior. Because he is a child, his parents ignore his reactions.
Danny’s mother is afraid of leaving Danny alone with his father because of the father’s violent alcoholic temper. Like most children, Danny is extremely sensitive to the unspoken tensions that rise and fall between his parents. When Danny was three years old the father broke the boy’s arm after Danny accidentally spilled his father’s beer on some papers. At the climax of The Shining, Jack tries to kill Danny and Wendy.