the Three Little Pigs, with Jack Torrance identified as the Big Bad Wolf, which Bruno Bettelheim interprets as standing for "all the asocial unconscious devouring powers" that must be overcome by a child's ego. The saying "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" appeared first in James Howell's Proverbs in English, Italian, French and Spanish (1659). Ambiguities in the film Roger Ebert notes that the film does not really have a "reliable observer", with the possible exception of Dick Hallorann. Ebert believes various events call into question the reliability of Jack, Wendy and Danny. This leads Ebert to conclude that: Ebert concludes that "The movie is not about ghosts but about madness and the energies it sets loose in an isolated situation primed to magnify them". The film critic James Berardinelli notes that "King would have us believe that the hotel is haunted. Kubrick is less definitive in the interpretations he offers." He dubs the film a failure as a ghost story, but brilliant as a study of "madness and the unreliable narrator." Ghosts versus cabin fever In some sequences, there is a question of whether or not there are ghosts present. In the scenes where Jack sees ghosts, he is always facing a mirror or, in the case of his storeroom conversation with Grady, a reflective, highly polished door. Film reviewer James Berardinelli notes "It has been pointed out that there's a mirror in every scene in which Jack sees a ghost, causing us to wonder whether the spirits are reflections of a tortured psyche." In Hollywood's Stephen King, Tony Magistrale wrote, Kubrick's reliance on mirrors as visual aids for underscoring the thematic meaning of this film portrays visually the internal transformations and oppositions that are occurring to Jack Torrance psychologically. Through ... these devices, Kubrick dramatizes the hotel's methodical assault on Torrance's identity, its ability to stimulate the myriad of self-doubts and anxieties by creating opportunities to warp Torrance's perspective on himself and [his family]. Furthermore the fact that Jack looks into a mirror whenever he "speaks" to the hotel means, to some extent, that Kubrick implicates him directly into the hotel's "consciousness", because Jack is, in effect, talking to himself. Ghosts are the implied explanation for Jack's seemingly physically impossible escape from the locked storeroom. In an interview of Kubrick by scholar Michel Ciment, the director made comments about the scene in the book