I just want to say that there are so many tragic things about Dan Torrance in Doctor Sleep. But the one that really stands out to me is that his "inner library" is The Overlook.
Rose the Hat has a beautiful and extravagant mansion; it's as old, gorgeous, and well maintained as she is. Abra has her room, the only place that she really possesses and has control over at her age; the ceiling filled with stars and the promise of expansion as she grows up.
And then there's Dan's library, his mind is shaped like The Overlook, every thought, memory, and experience is stored in a place that he fears, hates, and cannot forget. Specifically, in the room where his dad would work. Possibly a room he liked before 'the incident'. But now the typewriter is eternally waiting and no one is coming back to it.
The hotel traumatized him so completely that everything he knows, every experience he's had in his life from before, during, and after the events of The Shining are stored neatly away in its terrifying halls. Every good memory must be revisited inside that sprawling, predatory, beast of a place.
His version is tamed, sure, but even without blood flowing out of an elevator or the twins at the end of the hallway, every time he turned a corner, surely he'd remember that at one point they were there.
Dan's mind is not a palace, formed in reverence for the things he knows and the years he's lived. Nor is it his safe space, that he can customize and manipulate to his liking, filled with possibilities. His mind is decorated with trauma and terror. And it frames his thoughts and all of his future experiences.
His mind is his personal hell, or was until he tames it, sobers up, and turns it into a place that he can walk through every day. Telling himself that he has changed it and made it different. That as long as he maintains control, he's safe walking the halls.
What a tragic glimpse into his life.
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