So Stephen King sets up this very troubled family. They have been through some rough times, but now that Jack has stopped drinking, and as such, much of his violent and abusive behavior has stopped too.
We are really given no other conclusion to draw that Wendy is the Good Parent and that Jack, when he drank, was the Bad Parent. Now that he's sober, he's on his way to proving he can also be the Good Parent, but boy, if he ever drinks again, it's Bad Parent City.
The main evidence presented is a horrible event when Danny spilled some of his daddy's beer on the play Jack had been writing. Jack, in a drunken rage, grabs Danny by the arm with the intention of spanking him. However, he ends up grabbing too hard and breaks Danny's arm.
This happens two years before the narrative begins, but its a fresh wound in everyone's memory. Wendy, during her internal monologues goes so far as to call it an "accident". In other words, she believes Jack actually intended to break Danny's arm.
Jack's internal monologue adds no hope either as he can't really remember what he intended or why it happened.
But something doesn't sit right with me. Jack is described as grabbing his arm with one hand and spinning Danny around. That action snaps his arm. Has anybody ever tried to break an arm? It's not easy to do. Bodies are remarkably resilient, even three year old ones. I submit that it would be nearly impossible to break Danny's arm with one hand in the manner described.
I'm no doctor, but a break requires considerable force or torsion (twisting). To break an arm with one hand not intending to...I have a very hard time buying it.
Unless...
Crackpot Theory 1: Danny has Osteogenesis Imperfecta, or Brittle Bone disease. Not likely, since bone breakage seems to have been a one time occurrence.
Crackpot Theory 2: Jack is superhumanly strong. Like Superman strong. Not likely.
Crackpot Theory 3: Danny had a severe calcium deficiency due to poor diet/malnutrition. Plausible.
Lets examine Theory #3 in more detail. We know at the time Danny broke his arm that Jack was still working at the prep school making decent money, presumably. It's never stated that they were doing well, only how badly they had been doing financially since he was fired. I'm going to assume they were doing well enough to be able to afford proper nutrition for a three year old boy.
We also know that Wendy seems to be the primary caretaker for Danny. She is shown several times buying groceries, preparing Danny's meals, feeding him, leaving him snacks. Jack is never seen doing this. (At least not as far as I've gotten--I'm about half way through). It's also never expressly stated but strongly implied that Wendy is a full time stay at home mom, meaning that nobody else other than her or Jack would be in a position to be feeding Danny.
Many of the snacks Wendy is shown to feed Danny are of poor nutritional value (oreos, crackers, etc).
Given the assumption that the Torrances could have afforded to feed Danny well, and if his broken arm was due to a calcium deficiency, not excessive force on Jack's part, then it would appear that Wendy is indeed the Bad Parent here, not Jack. Or at least neither of them are the Good Parent.
But she's so sanctimonious in her judgement of Jack in her head that I think that doubly qualifies her as the Bad Parent.
PS- Relax. I'm joking. I don't for a second think that Wendy is culpable here. However, this injury, and the way it was described bothered me quite a bit because it would be very difficult to break an otherwise healthy child's arm in the manner described.
I think this is actually a product of King's writing that I have already noticed a few times: people that populate his books seem to be much more brittle than real people. I noticed it a couple of times in 'salem's Lot. Matt's sudden development of a heart condition due to confronting a vampire was something that seemed a bit forced but not enough to draw attention at the time. I didn't notice it in Carrie, but I wasn't really looking for it.
If these sorts of things happen in further books, I'll have to give this phenomenon a name. :)
"King's Disease"?
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