Connections Paragraph - Shutter Island

Connections ParagraphShutter Island

Question: How does the film Shutter Island demonstrate the theme ‘causes and consequences of madness’? Use specific, detailed evidence from the text to support your answer.

The film Shutter Island directed by Martin Scorcese demonstrates the theme ‘the causes and consequences of madness’ in several ways. Madness can be caused by guilt or traumatic events. Specifically, in this visual text, we see how ‘Teddy’ and his uncontrollable mind go wild all together. The film leads us to believe that he is heading down the path of disturbed mentality, when really, he is already there. What caused him to head toward that route, was guilt. The guilt of never getting his wife the help that she needed needed. The guilt of leaving her to kill all three of their children. The guilt of killing her. The whole traumatic experience drove him insane. Consequences of madness see 'normal' people turning to mental bodied of destruction and anger. As a consequence, Teddy's wife and her madness lead him to go mad; forcing himself to erase the guilt eating him from the inside, out. His head drifted into a parallel world where he is the hero, Teddy Daniels, when in reality, he was the destroyed soul of Andrew Laeddis. Laeddis deluded in that he was at Ashecliffe with a task which needed to be completed by a US Marshal like himself, when in reality they were trying to help him go back to the man he once was and allowed him to be destructive as a way of progressing. His hallucinations of his wife also drove him crazy, becoming destructive toward everything and everyone else, as a way of never letting her go.