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Chapter 2
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Shutter Island, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Mental Illness and Delusion
Conspiracy and Paranoia
Guilt and Grief
Violence and War
Isolation
Summary
Analysis
Dr. Cawley is an emaciated man with little dark eyes and sunken cheeks. Despite his appearance, he greets Teddy and Chuck warmly and shakes their hands. The strength of his grip surprises Teddy. After introducing himself, he dismisses McPherson. Afterward, he briefly talks about Shutter Island’s history of psychiatric treatment. Primarily, it revolved around barbarity—demonization, physical abuse, and mental abuse ran rampant in mental institutions. Dr. Cawley likes McPherson because McPherson shares his goal. He believes the point of psychiatric care is to heal the patient if possible. If a cure is impossible, then he thinks the goal should be to make sure patients live comfortable lives.
Dr. Cawley’s gaunt appearance implies he is under a great deal of stress. Like McPherson, Dr. Cawley is optimistic and recognizes the misdeeds in his field’s past. However, there remains a possibility that everything he says is merely lip service designed to throw Teddy off. After all, Teddy and Chuck are government agents who presumably have the authority to cause real problems for him if he is engaged in unethical behavior.
Themes
Teddy is skeptical. He is not sympathetic toward Dr. Cawley’s patients because they are violent offenders. In fact, almost all of them are murderers. Dr. Cawley acknowledges Teddy’s point but reminds him that his job is to treat his patients, not their victims. It is already too late for the victims, but that does not mean he should treat his patients cruelly.
If Dr. Cawley is a secret villain, he is doing a good job of hiding it, as Teddy comes across as much less sympathetic to readers than he does. One reason for this could be that Teddy’s job involves working with the victims of the people Dr. Cawley is treating and defending.
Themes
Dr. Cawley changes the subject. He asks Teddy and Chuck if the senator explained what was going on. Teddy and Chuck respond that no senator told them anything. Dr. Cawley brushes his previous comment aside and asks what they know about the situation. Teddy says he knows a woman named Rachel Solando, one of Cawley’s patients, is missing. Apparently, she escaped in the past 24 hours, and no one can find her.
Dr. Cawley’s question about the senator is a strange and seemingly out-of-context comment that gets dismissed for now but will come back again later. Meanwhile, Rachel Solando is one of the names Dr. Sheehan—who has yet to appear outside of the prologue—mentioned in his frame narrative.
Themes
Chuck asks if Rachel is dangerous. Dr. Cawley reminds him that everyone in the facility is dangerous, which is why they are there in the first place. Rachel is there because she took her three children to a lake behind her house and drowned them. After, she brought their bodies inside, arranged them around the dining room table, and served a meal. Her neighbor came by later in the day, discovered what she did, and turned her in to the authorities. To this day, Rachel still thinks her children are alive. Dr. Cawley suggests she may have escaped Shutter Island to go looking for them.
Rachel’s crime is one of the worst mentioned in the novel and its severity is difficult to come to terms with, even when practicing the sort of radical sympathy for which Dr. Cawley advocates. On the one hand, Rachel’s behavior suggests she has no idea what she has actually done. On the other hand, she committed as barbaric an act as one could think of. Because she was allowed to live, she has escaped and now poses a threat to other people.
Themes
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Teddy asks Dr. Cawley if his team has searched the entire island. Dr. Cawley assures him that they have and could not find Rachel anywhere. Then, Teddy asks if Dr. Cawley is positive Rachel was in her room the night of her escape. As proof, Dr. Cawley calls for an orderly. While they wait, Teddy asks Dr. Cawley for an aspirin because he feels a headache coming on. Dr. Cawley gives him some aspirin, which he takes with water.
Rachel’s disappearance looks increasingly impossible as Teddy and Chuck continue exploring the conditions of Ashecliffe. She would have had to make it through multiple levels of security without alerting anyone. Given that she has a tenuous grasp on reality in general, such an impressive feat seems unlikely.
Themes
A large African American orderly enters the room, and Dr. Cawley introduces him as Mr. Ganton. Ganton is the head orderly at Ashecliffe and has been with the institution for 17 years. As Teddy shakes Ganton’s hand, he senses fear and wonders if Ganton was in trouble with the law before coming to Shutter Island. Ganton explains that he took Rachel to her room and locked the door. He assures Teddy and Chuck that he took every security precaution, just as he always does. However, when Ganton went to get Rachel the following day, she was not in her room.
Teddy’s reaction to Mr. Ganton’s fear displays a prejudicial attitude that is present whenever he interacts with Black people in the novel. By the end of the novel, Lehane provides an alternative reason for Ganton’s reaction, which subverts and contradicts Teddy’s racist assumption. As is apparent in this passage, Teddy is a flawed protagonist, and the reader should remain wary of his assumptions and claims.
Themes
Teddy questions Ganton about his process. In particular, he wonders whether Rachel could have escaped when Ganton checked on her the following morning without Ganton realizing it. However, Ganton and Dr. Cawley assure him that such an escape would be impossible. The room is too small for Rachel to hide anywhere; Ganton would surely have noticed her if she had been there. Once Teddy is satisfied, Dr. Cawley dismisses Ganton. Then Teddy asks Dr. Cawley to take them to Rachel’s room.
The more details that emerge regarding Rachel’s escape, the more impossible it seems. Perhaps the mysterious nature of the escape is why Dr. Cawley thought it necessary to call in United States marshals to investigate the case. Or, alternatively, there is something else going on that Dr. Cawley does not want to reveal.
Themes
Upon arriving at Rachel’s room, Teddy immediately sees Ganton was right. The room is incredibly small, and there is nowhere Rachel could have hidden, including behind the door. As Teddy steps into the room, he thinks it feels more like a cell than anything else. Teddy asks Dr. Cawley who would have had access to the room. Dr. Cawley says that all of the orderlies, nurses, and doctors could gain access to the room if they wished, but they turn in their keys every night before leaving. Teddy inquires whether he could see the key log to determine who had access to Rachel’s room the night of her escape. Dr. Cawley promises to get it for him.
The conditions of Rachel’s room make it seem like she is more of a prisoner than a patient. No matter how hard Dr. Cawley tries to insist otherwise, these conditions are hardly different from a prison. In fact, if anything, they feel more restrictive. Of course, such restrictions might be necessary, but they are still hard to square with Dr. Cawley’s insistence on calling the residents of Ashecliffe “patients” rather than “inmates.”
Themes
Teddy also asks Dr. Cawley for the personal files of everyone at the facility. When Dr. Cawley asks why, Teddy explains that he thinks Rachel had help. Otherwise, he does not see how she could have escaped. Dr. Cawley tells Teddy he must speak to the warden before granting his request. Dr. Cawley’s answer angers Teddy, who insists his position gives him clearance to demand whatever he wants from Dr. Cawley. However, Dr. Cawley does not budge. He merely repeats the same answer.
Teddy is in a difficult position; while he might have the authority to demand whatever he wants from Dr. Cawley, he has no way of actually getting it from him—at least not in a timely manner. Additionally, Dr. Cawley’s suspicious behavior and prominent position make him a likely culprit in the case. For the moment, though, Teddy does not have proof of anything.
Themes
Teddy continues his investigation of the room and sees that Rachel left without her shoes. Dr. Cawley also points out a sheet of paper with Rachel’s handwriting. The paper reads like gibberish, though Dr. Cawley assures Teddy and Chuck that it has some meaning. Dr. Cawley explains that Rachel’s mind will do anything to shield her from the fact that she killed her children, which often involves constructing a world from scratch. Although the world may only make sense from Rachel’s perspective, it has a consistent logic, just like the note she left behind. Teddy looks at the note momentarily and feels for a second like he understands it. However, he quickly loses the feeling, and the note’s meaning continues to elude him.
The idea of constructing a world from scratch is important to the thematic concerns of the novel, though its relevance is not apparent until the story’s closing chapters. Meanwhile, the fact that Rachel left without shoes is yet another sign that she did not disappear on her own. After all, if she managed to escape the facility by herself, she would find herself in rough terrain. Additionally, Teddy’s momentary understanding of Rachel’s note suggests a connection between the two of them; however, like everything else in the novel, that connection is hazy for the time being.
Themes
