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Reality is what one perceives as true.
However it not necessarily mean that the believed reality is really truth, but does that really matter?

Teddy Daniels is a character conjured by Andrew Laeddis, the reality in which Andrew/Teddy is investigating a disappearance  at a mental hospital. Teddy believes his version of reality is true even when it does not match up with what everybody else perceived at the true reality. Scorsese puts the audience into Andrew/Teddy’s version of reality, which is later shattered.
The idea of reality is just a concept explored throughout the film being manipulated in many ways to serve Scorsese’s director’s purpose: to display the fragility of one’s mind. Or something like that idk

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Fire vs water represents the internal conflict corrupting Andrew's mind. Water represents the reality- his wife drowned his kids and he killed his wife. Fire represents the false reality Andrew has created - Teddy/Andrew. These opposing forces conflict together to signify how Andrew overcomes his 'person vs self' conflict. Scorsese contrasts 'Fire' and 'Water' to make a physiological connection. Andrew at first cannot stand the thought of water - symbolises his children drowning. The film progresses we see Teddy having a shower, and diving into water (accepting his reality). At the very start of the film Teddy is seen to be sickened by the thought/image of water - boat scene. Shows that Teddy has accepted his reality and acknowledged what he was done.

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Scorsese highlights the fragility of Teddy's mind by using film techniques character action and psychological connections. We see how fragile the mind is as we see the flashbacks Teddy experiences of when he was back in the wars. It is so fragile that in order to cope with his trauma, it has to create an entirely new life for him so that he doesn't have to spend the rest of his life thinking that his wife and his children died because of him

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Love is an underlying theme through shutter island, and is one of the reasons that drive Andrew to his state of insanity. Unable to put up with the guilt of having murdered his wife, and indirectly his children, he creates a alternative storyline to hide from his past wrongdoings.

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At the end of the film, we find out that Teddy suffers from delusion disorder and has created a new world (Teddy's world) to escape having to live knowing what he had done. He cannot handle living knowing the things he has done and seen so he has created the delusion of Teddy. We see him acknowleding this at the end of the find when he asks Chuck whether it would be better to 'live as a monster or die as a good man.'

Teddy's mental illness is a major focus, but the film also touches on how mental illness was treated in the 1950's when this film was set.

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theme: the disorientation/ misperception of reality.

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theme: the disorientation/ misperception of reality.

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the understanding of reality in the film shutter island is very blurred. the meaning of reality is used to manipulate the audience into thinking they know a specific character. Director, Martin Scorsese uses this theme of perceived reality to manifect the audience's interpretation of each character. he builds up the intention of good and bad characters, but as we see in the end, the roles switch. scoreses uses the film genre of 'german expressionism' to portray this theme. from this genre, symbolism closely related are ones of death, grief and darkness.

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Teddy's encounter with Dr Rachel Solando in the middle of the film, introduces the idea that that institutional power of Aschecliffe dictates the truth. The psychiatrists and doctors at Shutter Island are in the position of determining who is sane and who is not, they essentially have control over reality, by declaring those who disagree with them, as insane.  Teddy's struggle to establish what is really going on at Ashecliffe ultimately fails, and the viewer is left without the sense that there is a firm truth beyond Ashecliffe's doctors.

Teddy by the end of the film is confused and just like the viewer is trying to comprehend what is real and what isn't. This fuels the battle that he is fighting in his mind and progresses the idea of inner conflict. The power the asylum holds on Teddy means that they can continue on with this play and manipulate the truth as much as they want.

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Perspective - seeing the film through the eye of the protagonist

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Perspective - seeing the film through the eye of the protagonist

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Because we are introduced to the film from the main character's perspective, everything we see or think is exactly what the main character is seeing or thinking for the first time, when we are introduced to other characters or ideas that Teddy doesn't trust, we as the audience also begin to doubt the character/idea. Eg. In the scene with Dr Cawley at the lighthouse, he begins to explain everything and who Andrew really is, and yet Teddy denies what he says over and over because he is completely lost in his lie but at the same time so are we, because everything we've seen up to this point is everything that Teddy has seen, it's from his point of view.

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Delusion and unreality are personified in the character of Andrew Laeddis- Scorsese illustrates Laeddis' internal grapplings with guilt and loss, which eventually manifest into delusion and probable psychosis. Camera work (dutch tilt, common use of close up shots to show emotional responses), dialogue ('which is worse? to live as a monster or die as a good man?) and stark contrast in lighting (migraine scenes, Ward C) imply a 'duality of man'; a separation of the self within Andrew/Teddy that is formed on some concept of black and white morality - Teddy is 'good', Andrew is 'bad'.

Grieving the death of his family and nursing a guilty conscience (or, in reference to Freudian psychology, a wounded ego), the full extent of Andrew's descent into a completely delusional state is left up to audience interpretation. Any assumptions made regarding the longevity of such an illness are unconfirmed - only after Scorsese has aroused audience interest by means of 'conspiracy' (Ashecliffe, in its full historical context, may well be 'experimenting' on its patients - MKUltra, inhumane 'solutions' to America's problem with PTSD related mental illness).