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Chapter 8
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
Before examining the graveyard, Teddy notices some strange rocks piled down on the beach. He counts them and realizes there are 13 piles. He theorizes Rachel might have made the rock piles and wonders if it could be another code. He counts the number of rocks in each pile and writes the numbers down in his notebook. Chuck asks Teddy if he is a former intelligence officer. Teddy tells Chuck he was at one time but got discharged from the army. He also relates a story about how he messed up one day when supplying his troops with the enemy's coordinates. His mistake resulted in the deaths of half a battalion. He still remembers hearing gunfire and screams over a radio.
It is unclear whether the piles of rocks are a coincidence or not. Teddy assumes they are a message from Rachel, but he is grasping at straws at this point because Dr. Cawley and his team have effectively steamrolled his investigation. If the rocks are a message from Rachel, they are likely new unless Dr. Cawley and his team happened to miss them earlier. Assuming they are a message from Rachel, Teddy is back at square one; that is, he needs to figure out how she escaped her room and managed to survive without shoes, shelter, or food.
Themes
Chuck and Teddy examine the graveyard and look for anything that could be useful for their case. They find a large, beautiful mausoleum and step inside to shield themselves from the storm. Neither knows why such an elaborate structure would exist on the island. In the mausoleum, Chuck and Teddy trade war stories. Chuck tells Teddy about the only time he killed a man in combat. Meanwhile, Teddy says that he has killed too many men to count. Teddy also tells Chuck that he does not think he would ever let his son go to war, even if the cause was wholly just. He thinks killing is too much to ask of a man, regardless of the circumstances.
The mausoleum is a fitting setting for Teddy and Chuck to trade war stories because it is a memento mori—a reminder of death. As it turns out, it seems like Dr. Naehring was right when he called Teddy a man of violence. Although Teddy might not enjoy killing and have a moral aversion to it, he is still responsible for the deaths of many people. From the way he speaks, Teddy likely killed more people than anyone held at Ashecliffe. While his killings may have more moral justification, they were probably equally traumatizing, and Teddy has not dealt with that trauma.
Themes
Chuck acknowledges Teddy's point. He also says that people who did not go to war will never understand it. Teddy agrees and then tells a story about a war crime he and his troop committed. When his troop rolled into Dachau and witnessed the devastation the Nazis caused, they rounded up every SS member they could find and executed them after they had already surrendered. Teddy knows what he did was wrong but thinks he did it for the right reason. Regardless, the memory will always haunt him.
This is the second time in the novel World War II is mentioned and, indeed, one of the novel’s main concerns is asking how to deal with the violence and trauma that war creates. Here, Teddy has a hard time squaring his moral intuitions with what he felt was right in the moment. In the abstract, he does not feel bad about the deaths of Nazis; however, he does not like that he was the one who pulled the trigger.
Themes
After bonding over the war, Chuck asks Teddy how much he knows about Shutter Island. Teddy admits that he knows more than he let on previously and that the island frightens him. He also says that he believes Dr. Cawley and his team are experimenting with hallucinogens such as LSD and Mescaline on their patients. Chuck finds it hard to believe that such experiments would be legal. Teddy assures him that the experiments are probably legal, but that does not mean they are ethical.
Again, it appears there is more to Teddy than meets the eye. One wonders how many more secrets he is keeping. The experiments Teddy mentions that use LSD and Mescaline recall real secret government programs such as MK Ultra. MK Ultra was a CIA program where scientists dosed test subjects with high levels of hallucinogenic drugs without their consent. Whether something similar is going on at Ashecliffe is unclear, but Lehane has this history in mind.
Themes
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Then, Chuck asks Teddy how he knows about all of this in the first place. Teddy tells Chuck he previously called around to investigate a different institution that he thought was holding Andrew. However, that institution told him they transferred Andrew to Shutter Island. When Teddy contacted Shutter Island, they told him they did not have a patient named Andrew Laeddis. This response intrigued Teddy, and he began investigating Shutter Island. One of his associates warned Teddy to avoid the island because Ashecliffe was performing classified experiments. However, Teddy was determined to find Laeddis and discover the island's secrets, so he ignored the warning.
At this point, Teddy is alleging a formal conspiracy, which apparently he suspected from the start. Much of the fiction written during the Cold War was filled with paranoia and conspiracy theories, which reflected the public’s feelings toward the United States government. Although Lehane wrote Shutter Island after the Cold War, the novel’s concerns reflect those of the time during which it is set. Given the time period, Teddy’s concerns do not read as overly paranoid, though he does not have proof of anything as of yet.
Themes
When Teddy heard there was a chance to go to Shutter Island, he jumped on it immediately. He says it is “lucky” that the opportunity came up. Chuck assures him that luck has nothing to do with it. He theorizes that Dr. Cawley and his team may have lured Teddy to the island because they discovered he was looking into them.
The tricky part of conspiracies is that they cause one’s paranoia to metastasize, and reasonable concerns turn into unreasonable ones. That is not to say that Teddy and Chuck’s theories are incorrect—it is impossible to know at this point. Rather, it is to say that the problem with paranoia is that it is impossible to know how paranoid one should be.
Themes
Teddy does not buy Chuck's theory at first, so Chuck continues peeling back the layers. He suggests that Rachel Solando could be a complete fabrication because her escape seems impossible, and they have not seen any evidence that she actually exists. Someone could have doctored her file and invented the case to draw Teddy to the island. Teddy is still skeptical, but Chuck insists it makes the most sense given everything they have seen. He worries that the two of them are in danger. Just as he says this, the mausoleum door rips off and gets carried away by the storm, shocking both of them.
The wind tearing off the mausoleum door is yet another portentous sign that signifies the problems to come. In general, the severity of the storm matches up with the story beats of the plot—the more intense the story becomes, the stronger the storm gets. Meanwhile, Chuck’s theory about Rachel Solando being fake is one of his more plausible suggestions so far. After all, it is true that they have no real proof she exists.
Themes
Teddy asks Chuck if he recalls when Dr. Cawley asked him about a senator. Chuck says that he does. Teddy tells him that the senator Dr. Cawley was referring to heads up a committee on funding for mental health resources. The senator is skeptical about Shutter Island because of a recent legal case. A man named George Noyce went to the island and only spent two weeks there. A few weeks after returning, Noyce stabbed several people and went to jail. His lawyer pleaded insanity and, indeed, for some time, Noyce appeared completely insane. However, about a year later, he recovered and started discussing strange experiments at Ashecliffe.
Now that Teddy starts revealing more information about the island, his theories and accusations begin to make more sense. However, there are still a lot of question marks, particularly around how this conspiracy relates to Laeddis. If it doesn’t, and Laeddis’s presence on the island is merely a coincidence, then that is almost harder to believe than Chuck and Teddy’s wildest theories. At this point, one wonders whether Teddy has divulged everything he knows or whether there is still information he is holding back.
Themes
The senator and Teddy were interested in Noyce's case and eventually contacted each other. While on Shutter Island, Noyce apparently received doses of hallucinogens, and someone performed a transorbital lobotomy on him. Evidently, the lobotomy did not work, given that Noyce still managed to kill multiple people. Chuck asks how that is possible, but before Teddy can answer, he hears someone calling to them out in the storm. Unnerved, Teddy and Chuck step outside of the mausoleum to find McPherson.
A transorbital lobotomy is a procedure where the surgeon accesses the patient’s brain through the eye socket. As one might suspect, such a procedure carries a significant amount of risk, particularly in the 1950s. In the modern day, such a procedure is never used to treat someone with a mental disorder, as it is thought to be outdated and immoral. Notably, this is exactly what Chuck predicted about such procedures at the beginning of the novel.
Themes
