It’s not until you finished reading the novel Shutter Island that the actual matter starts revealing. Meantime you’re so caught up in the thrilling story that you forget about the true message. It’s first when you put down the book the thoughts accumulate, not only on what happened, but also what Lehane (the author) wants us to discuss. Shutter Island is the kind of novel you want to browse through and search for clues and link them together in concrete messages. What looks like one story is actually a parallel to another one and overlapped by a third one, it’s really good written. Therefore I think it’s worth reading it again.
The year is 1954, U.S. Marshall Edward “Teddy” Daniels and his new colleague Chuck Aule have been appointed to investigate a disappearance from Ashecliffe Hospital for criminally insane on Shutter Island. The escaped is Rachel Solando, a woman who’s convicted by drowning her three children in a lake.
The following is very much considered as a spoiler, so if you haven’t read the book or watched the movie you should not read further!
Anyway. The story ends when we discover that Teddy himself is mentally ill and that everything is an act arranged by Chuck and Dr. Cawley in hopes that he will face the fact that he killed his wife. It doesn’t work, and Teddy is sent away to lobotomy. His final words is very important for the ending and the story: “Which would be worse, to live as a monster, or die as a good man?”. It’s also the last sentence of the book, and therefore it leaves room for interpretation. I believe there are two ways to see it:
Option one:
He’s insane. To live as a monster would be the knowledge of killing his wife. It would get him of the island, but he doesn’t want to live knowing it happened. To be a good man would be not knowing and feel innocence in his own mind. Therefore, the lobotomy is the only way, and he accepts becoming a vegetable. This is his way of dying as a good man.
Option two:
He’s sane. To live as a monster would be to give in to the story he is being told by the doctors, and live by making them believe he was insane, but now cured. To be the good man he must stick to what he believes in disregard whatever the doctors told him; He’s not a murderer. If he chooses this path he will die, but at least he will die with the integrity that he felt was right.
In this book you don't have a concrete ending of a story, and that’s the charm. You don't really need it. I think every reader has to look for clues and find their own interpret of the story. In a few years think I will read the book once more and see if I can figure mine out.