Shutter Island is a film I probably should have prepared myself for before watching. From start to finish the film itself and the story of our protagonist Teddy is an enigma. The film starts from a weird point in time which already makes me as the viewer slightly un-eased. From what we can gather Teddy is sent to go and investigate a missing persons case on an island that houses a mental institution. The more we go into the movie and explore “Teddy” the truth becomes more and more jaded, fuzzy, and hard to grasp on to.
What Teddy’s military background says about him is that he feels responsible for things that are completely and entirely out of his control. He wants to be able to save everyone and do everything and that is part of his mental trauma. The fact that he could not save his own children from his wife after several warnings and red flags had such a toll on him that he started to refer to himself as Teddy instead of Andrew Laeddis. He has created a fiction that has become so real to him, that the most extreme measures are taken to try to fix him and cure his illness.
At the end of the film we think he is cured and expects this reality that he killed his wife, and he no longer is this Teddy Daniels. Just when we think everything is going to turn out fine for him, he believes Chuck, is still his partner and not the doctor who had left on vacation, and this dialogue follows:
Teddy Daniels : You know, this place makes me wonder.
Chuck Aule : Yeah, what’s that, boss?
Teddy Daniels : Which would be worse – to live as a monster? Or to die as a good man?
He clearly still feels guilty and is going to take the lobotomy instead of living a normal life with the guilty conscious.
The Horn 