This is a question that is open for the audience to decide. Some believe that the Rachel Solando in the cave was real; others believe that she was a figment of Teddy's imagination.
Who was hiding in the caves on the side of the island in Shutter Island?
He finds a cave. Inside is a woman who claims to be the real Rachel Solando—an undercover reporter. She says they had her on psychotropic medication and that the doctors at the island were trying to perfect mind control. But when she went to report this fact they had her committed to the island.
In 1954, U.S. Marshal Edward "Teddy" Daniels and his new partner Chuck Aule travel to Ashecliffe Hospital for the criminally insane on Shutter Island, Boston Harbor, to investigate the disappearance of Rachel Solando, a patient of the hospital who had previously drowned her three children.
Mrs. Kearns writes "run" on the paper she slips to Teddy because she knows he has an opportunity to escape while they're doing the whole role-play experiment. It's also why she sounds "coached" about what to tell Teddy — she has been.
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.
Cawley says that Rachel Solando does not exist and that Teddy's delusions are much more severe than he thought, denies dosing him with neuroleptics, and further explains that the tremors are due to his withdrawal from chlorpromazine, a drug that they have been giving him as a patient at Ashecliffe for the past two ...
Teddy begins to face reality when he meets the woman he believes is Rachel Solando. In the cave, she prods him to reflect on his time on the island, but he doesn't quite put the pieces together until he meets George Noyce in the lighthouse.
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.
What Mental Illness Did Teddy Daniels have in Shutter Island?
However, in a radical twist, we find that Teddy is himself a patient at the asylum. He suffers from Delusional Disorder, creating a false world to escape the dark reality of his past. Shutter Island is one of the many films that present the ethical considerations of psychological treatment to a mainstream audience.
Was Andrew faking it at the end of Shutter Island?
In the end of "Shutter Island," it's revealed that the main character, Teddy Daniels, is actually Andrew Laeddis, a patient at the mental institution. He has been experiencing delusions and hallucinations, which were orchestrated by the staff to help him come to terms with the truth of his past.
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.
He finds out that he was never Teddy, the US Marshal, but Andrew Laeddis, who murdered his own wife after she drowned their three children. His partner Chuck, played by Mark Ruffalo, turns out to be a doctor who was watching over him and is actually named Lester Sheehan.
In this thriller, Lehane created a fictitious hospital island with nefarious happenings. Though the later film used Peddocks Island as the backdrop, Lehane's true inspiration likely comes from other islands that have long histories in institutions and social services, such as Rainsford Island and Long Island.
When Teddy dreams about Laeddis, Laeddis sits beside the fire in an armchair. Teddy's version of Laeddis; a scarred and disfigured man, then lights a match and proceeds to light Teddy's cigarette. This act of Teddy accepting the light from Laeddis is symbolic of Teddy accepting this fantasy as reality.
Only Teddy is not a real person but a delusion created by inmate Andrew Laeddis. The ending of “Shutter Island” reveals that DiCaprio's character is a patient himself, committed to the Shutter Island facility after murdering his wife (Michelle Williams) because she went insane and killed their children.
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.
What was wrong with Teddy's wife in Shutter Island?
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.
While Shutter Island and the hospital depicted in the film are both fictitious, they are based in some truth. Islands throughout the Boston Harbor have been home to many social welfare institutions over the years.
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.
Cawley seated at a desk. 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.
Andrew was horrified and blamed himself for their death. We're shown in the Shutter Island ending that insanity took Andrew over, and he shot Dolores dead. Andrew goes completely insane and his mind is unable to face what he's done. He is admitted in Ward C at the psychiatric facility (Ashecliffe) at Shutter Island.
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.
So, finding the cave, was in itself a manifestation of Teddy's own mind using "survival instincts" and the rats were most possibly, remnants of his past life during his days at the German Camp, where he may or may not have been a part of and witnessed mass shooting and the pile of the corpses laid alongside the path.
What does the ending of Shutter Island mean on Reddit?
Can we talk about the ending of Shutter Island? So the movie makes it pretty clear that Teddy was crazy the entire time and that the whole movie was an experiment; a last effort to bring him back to sanity. All of the references point to him being crazy and it was a nice twist at the end of the movie.
