What Does The Ending Of Shutter Island Really Mean?

A History Of (American) Violence

Shutter Island is influenced heavily by movie history aesthetically and by Martin Scorsese's own history thematically, but American history on the whole - in particular its history of conflict - is explicitly written all over the movie. There are references to the Civil War (when the Ashecliffe facility was built) and the Korean War (there's talk of Korean forces brainwashing US soldiers), memories of WWII abound, while the film is set during the Cold War, a time of mostly non-violence that still left the USA in a state of perpetual fear. The most powerful weapon on Earth, the H-bomb, also weighs heavy on the characters' minds ("They say there are bombs that can reduce whole cities to ash"), while the constant threat of violence permeates the movie (even in dialogue scenes, there are sickening descriptions of barbaric acts and characters making abrupt statements like, "God loves violence"). It almost seems inevitable that Teddy Daniels/Andrew Laeddis's fate is to be an ugly one. Here, another recurring Scorsese theme rears its head: that man is the product of his environment. In this case, Teddy/Andrew has been manipulated by the psychosphere of post-WWII America to become aggressive and paranoid. Shutter Island suggests that America's state of almost perpetual conflict, continuing even in times of apparent 'peace', results in yet further violence among its people. The film's closing act appears to confirm it: Shutter Island ends with a lobotomy, a horrific zombification, as the war between the new form of psychology and the old comes to a close, with the more violent option winning out.