Shutter Island

“‘But do we lose our past to assure our future?’ Chuck flicked his cigarette out into the foam. ‘That’s the question. What do you lose when you sweep a floor, Teddy? Dust. Crumbs that would otherwise draw ants. But what of the earring she misplaced? Is that in the trash now, too?’”

Chuck is specifically talking about the future of psychiatric hospitals, which he supposes will be shut down one day, and which will in turn leave people who are dangerously mentally ill with no place to go. But Chuck’s metaphor also speaks to a larger theme in the novel: the tension between the past and the future. While moving forward is important, Chuck warns that letting go of the past can also mean losing something precious. 

“McPherson said, ‘In a less enlightened age, a patient like [Vincent] Gryce would have been put to death. But here they can study him, define a pathology, maybe isolate the abnormality in his brain that caused him to disengage so completely from acceptable patterns of behavior. If they can do that, maybe we can reach a day where that kind of disengagement can be rooted out of our society entirely.’”

This quotation highlights Ashecliffe’s progressive philosophy; the doctors are not just trying to treat mental illness, they are trying to find a cure. However, McPherson’s statement also implies that the patients at Ashecliffe are also test subjects, which confirms Teddy’s suspicions about the hospital. 

“‘But how does the truth never get through?’ Teddy said. ‘I mean, [Rachel is] in a mental institution. How does she not notice that from time to time?’

‘Ah,’ Cawley said, ’now we’re getting into the true horrible beauty of the full-blown schizophrenic’s paranoid structure. If you believe, gentlemen, that you are the sole holder of truth, then everyone else must be lying. And if everyone is lying…’

‘Then any truth they say,’ Chuck said, ‘must be a lie.’”

This exchange introduces the tension between perception and reality that emerges as a major theme in the novel. It also foreshadows the conflict at the end of Shutter Island, where Teddy—who believes he knows the truth—refuses to accept Cawley’s reasoning that Teddy is Andrew Laeddis despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. 

“‘My experience? You can’t break a whole society that doesn’t want to hear what you have to say.’”

Teddy says this to Chuck after Teddy threatens to abandon the investigation into Rachel’s disappearance. No one at Ashecliffe is telling the marshals the truth, but they cannot force the staff to cooperate with the investigation. This statement also foreshadows the role reversal at the end of the novel, where Teddy will be the one who refuses to hear what Cawley and Sheehan have to say. 

“‘Yes.’” [Dolores] bends her head back, looks up at him. ‘You’ve known.’

‘I haven’t.’

‘Yes, you have. You can’t leave.’” 

In this dream sequence, Dolores helps Teddy unravel the mystery of Rachel Solando and the code she left behind. While his conscious mind misses some of the clues, his subconscious begins to put the puzzle pieces together. On first glance, Dolores is referring to the fact that Teddy realizes both Rachel and Laeddis are still on the island, so he cannot abandon the case. However, Dolores’ statement has a second meaning. She is also telling Teddy that—subconsciously, at least—he knows he is Laeddis, and as a patient of Ashecliffe Hospital, he literally cannot leave Shutter Island.

“‘The mind,’” [Peter Breene] said. ‘Mine, yours, anyone’s. It’s an engine essentially. That’s what it is. A very delicate, intricate motor. And it’s got all these pieces, all these gears and bolts and hinges. And we don’t even know what half of them do. But if just one gar slips, just one…[h]ave you thought about that? […] You should. It’s just like a car. No different. One gear slips, one bolt cracks, and the whole system goes haywire. Can you live knowing that? […] That it’s all trapped in here and you can’t get to it and you don’t really control it. But it controls you, doesn’t it?’”

Breene articulates one of the underlying anxieties of the novel: that any normal person is one trauma away from a mental break. He also explains that the belief that people have control over their own minds is an illusion; Breene implies that if this were the case, no one would be mentally ill. 

“She laughed some more, tried to nuzzle him again, but he could see her eyes growing hard with desperation. To be happy. To not be left alone. To have the old days back—before he worked too much, drank too much, before she woke up one morning and the world seemed too bright, too loud, too cold.”

Rachel and Teddy’s marriage has hit hard times: Teddy drinks too much, and Rachel’s mental illness is getting worse. She desperately wants to return to the way things were before, when she and Teddy were happy. But trauma fundamentally changes people. There is no way for Rachel to reclaim the past, and her desperate attempt to cling to it intensifies her manic depression. Additionally, Rachel’s mentality here mimics Teddy’s mentality in the present, and both have disastrous consequences on the characters’ mental well-being. 

“She came to him with a towel, but he pushed her away and sucked air through his teeth and felt the pain burrowing into his eyes, scorching his brain, and he bled into the sink and he felt like crying. Not from the pain. Not from the hangover. But because he didn’t know what was happening to his wife, to the girl he’d first danced with at the Cocoanut Grove. He didn’t know what she was becoming or what the world was becoming with its lesions of tiny, dirty wars and furious hatreds and spies in Washington, in Hollywood, gas masks in schoolhouses, cement bomb shelters in basements. And it was, somehow, all connected—his wife, this world, his drinking, the war he’d fought because he honestly believed it would end all this…”

Teddy recognizes the reality of his situation in this moment. He has been transformed by the violence of World War II, and the trauma of what he has done and seen manifests in his drinking. But he is not the only one changed by war. World War II remains the bloodiest battle in history, with over 70 million fatalities. That level of violence fundamentally reshapes the world, as Teddy observes here. Given this, Rachel’s increasing struggles with paranoia and depression are symptomatic of the world around her. She symbolizes the anxieties of a postwar culture, and the murder of her children symbolizes Lehane’s views on the hopelessness of the future. 

“It was something Dolores used to say. And the lips and hair were both similar, enough so that if Rachel’s ace got much closer, he could be forgiven for thinking he was talking to Dolores. They even had the same tremulous sensuality, Teddy never sure—even after all their years together—if his wife was even aware of its effect.”

The line between reality and fantasy has begun to blur for Teddy, as he cannot separate the memory of Dolores from the reality of Rachel. This also foreshadows the truth about Rachel Solando: she and Dolores are one in the same. 

“Laeddis was a grim specimen of humanity—a gnarled cord of a body, a gangly head with a jutting chin that was twice as long as it should have been, misshapen teeth, sprouts of blond hair on a scabby, pink skull—but Teddy was glad to see him. He was the only one he knew in the room.”

Everything about Laeddis is disgusting and wrong, from his “misshapen teeth” to his “scabby” skull. Laeddis’ physical appearance is an outward manifestation of his character. In other words, Laeddis appears grotesque because he is a murderer. But there is another layer here, too. If Teddy really is Laeddis, then Laeddis also shows how Teddy thinks of himself. Should Teddy accept that he and Laeddis are the same person, then Teddy must also confront the ugly truth of who he has become. 

“‘How much violence, Marshal, do you think a man can carry before it breaks him?’”

Violence leaves scars, and this quotation reminds readers that those injuries—whether they are physical or mental—add up, especially if the person has not adequately dealt with the trauma. And while Cawley asks this as a rhetorical question, it already has an answer. Teddy has experienced physical and psychological violence throughout his life, and those experiences compounded to cause his mental break. 

“He thought: so this is what it feels like to love. No logic to it—he barely knew her. But there it was just the same. He’d just met the woman he’d known, somehow, since before he was born. The measure of every dream he’d never dared indulge.”

Teddy’s love for Dolores is immediate, illogical, and absolute. The depth of Teddy’s love also helps explain his continued obsession with Dolores and his inability to move on. 

“Teddy felt mice scurry along his ribs as he stepped into the room because it reminded him of the room in his dream, the one where Laeddis had offered him a drink and Rachel had slaughtered her children. It was hardly the same room—the one in his dream had had high windows with thick curtains and streams of light and a parquet floor and heavy chandeliers—but it was close enough.”

Teddy’s dreams are once again bleeding over into reality. The more time Teddy spends on Shutter Island, the harder it becomes to separate fiction from reality. In this instance, however, Teddy’s dream mirrors a physical location that he has not yet seen, which suggests Teddy’s increasingly fragile mental state. 

“George Noyce smiled through the stream of tears and shook his head very slowly. ‘You can’t kill Laeddis and expose the truth at the same time. You have to make a choice. You understand that, don’t you?’”

Noyce highlights two potential versions of reality. On the one hand, if Laeddis and Teddy are the same person, Teddy literally cannot kill Laeddis. The only path to the truth is through Teddy’s acceptance of his authentic identity. However, Noyce’s warning can be read another way: if Teddy kills Laeddis, he becomes a murderer, and as a convicted criminal, he will lose his authority to expose Ashecliffe’s secrets. 

“Let her go, Noyce had said.

‘I can’t,’ Teddy said, and the worshippers came out cracked and too high and he could feel screams welling in the center of his chest.

Noyce leaned back as far as he could and still maintain his grip on the bars as he cocked his head so that the ear rested on his shoulder.

‘Then you’ll never leave this island.’”

This quotation foreshadows the novel’s conclusion, where Cawley confronts Teddy with the truth. Teddy views Dolores through rose-colored glasses, and his inability to accept who Dolores became—or his role in her decline and death—puts him in jeopardy. 

“The marshals took care of their own. They’d certainly send men. But the question was one of time—Would they get there before Ashecliffe and its doctors had altered Teddy irreparably, turned him into Noyce? Or worse, the guy who played tag?

Teddy hoped so, because the more he found himself looking at Chuck’s back, the more certain he grew that he was now alone in this. Completely alone.”

Noyce has told Teddy that Chuck is working for Cawley, and Teddy has begun to believe him. Chuck was his only ally on the island, and now Teddy knows he has to work alone. 

“‘If you are deemed insane, then all actions that would otherwise prove you are not do, in actuality, fall into the framework of an insane person’s actions. Your sound protests constitute denial. Your valid fears are deemed paranoia. Your survival instincts are labeled defense mechanisms. It’s a no-win situation. It’s a death penalty really. Once you’re here, you’re not getting out. No one leaves Ward C.’”

The “real” Rachel Solando explains how easily a sane person can become trapped in a hospital like Ashecliffe. All it takes is the label “insane,” and then every protestation—no matter how reasonable—gets discounted as a symptom of illness. This explanation is critical to establishing the tension between Teddy’s and Cawley’s perspectives on Teddy’s mental state later in the novel. 

“‘You don’t have a partner, Marshal. You came here alone.’”

Cawley’s statement marks a critical turning point in the novel. This moment forces readers to decide whether Teddy is the victim of an elaborate set-up, or if his drive for absolution and revenge has finally pushed him over the edge. 

“‘It’s just I’ve noticed that people on this island have a way of creating their own truth. Figure they say it’s so enough times, then it must be so.’”

By definition, the truth must be “in accordance with fact or reality.” Teddy’s use of the word “true” implies something different—that truth can be constructed if the belief behind it is strong enough. Lehane thus introduces the question of whether there is such a thing as one knowable, objective truth, or if all truth is shaped by a person’s perspective.

“‘Your name is Andrew Laeddis,’ Cawley said. ‘The sixty-seventh patient at Ashecliffe Hospital? He’s you, Andrew.’”

Cawley’s revelation is a cliffhanger that marks the climax of Shutter Island. The unexpected twist also creates the “thrill” of the novel that is a hallmark of the genre.

“‘You’re a ‘bad sailor,’ Andrew. You know what that means? It means you’re a bad father. You didn’t navigate for them, Andrew. You didn’t save them.’”

Cawley’s explanation does three things. First, it explains Lehane’s subtitle for Day 4, which is “The Bad Sailor.” Second, it helps readers understand the enormity of Teddy’s guilt; he blames himself for being unable to take care of his family. And third, it contextualizes Teddy’s dislike of water. 

“‘We’re running of out of time,’ Lester Sheehan said. ‘Please understand, it’s all changing. Psychiatry. It’s had its own war going on for some time, and we’re losing.’

[…]

‘Yeah?’ Teddy said absently. ‘And who’s ‘we’?’

Cawley said, ‘Men who believe that the way to the mind is not by way of ice picks through the brain or large dosages of dangerous medicine but through an honest reckoning of the self.’”

Teddy has found out that Chuck is actually Dr. Lester Sheehan, another of Ashecliffe’s resident psychiatrists. Sheehan explains that more than Teddy’s mental health is at stake—the fate of psychotherapy hangs in the balance. (It is worth noting that Sheehan positions psychotherapists as the “good guys” who advocate for humane treatment for the mentally ill.

“She had been what carried him through the war, through this awful world. He loved her more than his life, more than his soul. But he’d failed her. Failed his children. Failed the lives they’d all built together because he’d refused to see Dolores, really see her, see that her insanity was not her fault, not something she could control, not some proof of moral weakness or lack of fortitude.”

Teddy realizes how his love for Dolores has actually failed her. By refusing to see her mental illness, Teddy allowed it to spiral out of control. He also recognizes that Dolores’ mental illness was out of her control, and the onus for his family’s tragedy rests equally on his shoulders.