Fire represents the fantasy Andrew/Teddy has created around himself. This is why his hallucinations are always accompanied by fire in one way or another. Water, on the other hand, represents the reality of what happened to his wife and children.
Fire is the symbol of Andrew's fantasy world. In contrast, water (the opposite of fire) is the symbol of the reality of what happened to him. His wife drowns his children in water and it is water that makes Andrew so upset/uneasy/sick throughout the film.
Shutter Island (Film) Symbols, Allegory and Motifs
Water (motif) Scorsese deploys water and water imagery throughout the film to denote tragic events from Teddy's past, namely the drowning of his three children in a lake. ...
The first major source of light Shutter Island relies on is low-key lighting with no fill light. For example, in scenes where Teddy is lighting matches in order to see, light is shed primarily on his face and any nearby objects, leaving the rest of the scene shrouded in darkness.
What does the light house symbolize in Shutter Island?
' By this, he establishes that he believes the lighthouse, or the truth about himself, is what is making the island evil. The lighthouse is separated from the mainland by water and heavily guarded, this is symbolic in the way that he doesn't want to find out the truth. That the truth of his reality is holding him back.
SHUTTER ISLAND Breakdown | Ending Explained, Easter Eggs, Hidden Details & Things You Missed
Who set the house on fire in Shutter Island?
Teddy experiences migraine headaches, flashbacks of his experiences as a U.S. Army soldier during the liberation of Dachau, and also vivid dreams of his wife Dolores, who was killed in a fire set by arsonist Andrew Laeddis.
To keep quiet for the sake of all those he could still save if the results of the roleplay are a success. "Shhh. Keep quiet. You can't run from what you've done, but that's okay."
He explains that Andrew Laeddis is an anagram of Edward Daniels and that he murdered his wife, Dolores Chanal (an anagram of Rachel Solando), two years before after she drowned their three children during a manic episode. This is the answer of the code "the law of 4" and Laeddis is the 67th patient at Ashecliffe.
Andrew created the Teddy persona as a result of his guilt for not helping his wife sooner, and the events of the film were all part of a role-play designed by Cawley to help Andrew accept reality. Chuck was in fact a hospital staff member called Dr. Lester Sheehan, and a nurse played the role of Rachel Soldano.
It turns out that Andrew is actually an inmate at Ashecliffe, and that the film's events up until this point — Cawley's allowing Andrew to play the role of Teddy — were designed to cure his insanity that stemmed from murdering his depressed wife after she drowned their children at their lake house.
Shutter Island is a film that shows so many evidences of hallucination experienced by the main character, Teddy Daniels. Teddy Daniels had bad experiences in the past which lead him to change his identity in order to forget his past.
Shutter Island does a great job at depicting Teddy's particular case of Delusional Disorder accurately, but unfortunately, without proper understanding of the 1950s context, may end up doing more harm than good to the representation of psychology in modern film.
Shutter Island is a movie about Leonardo DiCaprio's character, Teddy, who is introduced as a US Marshal assigned to investigate the eponymous Shutter Island, a mental sanatorium in the 1950s. He investigates the island, believing that the man who killed his wife, Andrew Laeddis, is there.
Water and fire symbolize life, fertility, creativity and inspiration in cultures around the world. At the same time, water and fire also represent loss, death, and destruction. Water and fire are mutually destructive—water will extinguish a flame, just as fire will boil water away to nothing.
Why does Leonardo DiCaprio have a bandaid in Shutter Island?
It is unclear why he wears the band-aid, but it stays with him until nearly the end of the film. He only gets rid of it while taking a shower after John Cawley informs him that he actually showed up on the island alone.
DiCaprio's character is part of a role-playing experiment to help him overcome repressed memories, which is why the glass appears to be invisible. From Teddy's perspective, he blocks out the water because it reminds him of a traumatic experience.
Some believe that the Rachel Solando in the cave was real; others believe that she was a figment of Teddy's imagination. It is possible that he fabricated the Rachel Solando in the cave, because what she says was everything he wanted to hear, which gives him a reason to find everyone suspicious on Shutter Island.
The quote suggests that Edward knows who he is now but is continuing to act as Teddy because he can't face murdering his wife. Edward is saying he would rather be lobotomized, which he is comparing to the death of his old self, than accept that he is really Edward and live his whole life knowing that he is a murderer.
Why did he call him Teddy at the end of Shutter Island?
Instead he moved the family to the lake house where she tragically killed their children. Andrew then created the persona of Teddy out of guilt for not helping his wife, and Cawley designed a role-play around it an in attempt to get Andrew to accept reality.
Cawley tells Teddy that he himself is in fact Andrew Laeddis (an anagram of Edward Daniels) and that he has been a patient at Shutter Island for two years for murdering his wife, Dolores Chanal (an anagram of Rachel Solando), after she murdered their three children.
There is no Rachel Solando. There is no Chuck, at least as we see him. It's all a trick on the person we know as Teddy for the entirety of the story, right up until the end. Teddy, not the arsonist of his fantasy, was the one who killed his wife after she had drowned their three children.
However, by Shutter Island's ending, viewers have learned Chuck is actually Dr. Sheehan, Teddy's doctor, who Teddy believed had left the island after Rachel's disappearance. It turns out Teddy is the patient and created a delusion to escape the crime he committed.
Dolores was bipolar, and she killed her children during a moment of mental crisis. Dolores had been living with bipolar for quite a while in Shutter Island, and it turns out that Andrew refused to seek help for his wife, instead deciding to ignore her struggles even when she burned down their apartment.
Biography. Dolores was a wife of Andrew Laediss and had three children with him. She suffered from depression and delusions and her state had been worsening over time.
"Shutter Island" might be the only picture that on subsequent viewings, becomes a DIFFERENT film from the one originally seen. I say this because the first time around, there's no way to take the character of Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) other than at face value.
