Lehane constructs Shutter Island as a conscious meditation on the blurred boundary between the animalistic violence of the madman, highlighted in seventeenth-and eighteenth-century confinement discourses and Descartes’s best-known contribution to philosophy, cogito ergo sum, also known as the cogito. The book and the surprisingly faithful film adaptation follow Daniels as his investigation on the island forces him to confront his own fractured psyche: that Daniels is Laeddis and has created an elaborate fantasy world to avoid confronting the guilt he feels over neglecting his wife’s obvious mental illness, leading her to drown their three children, and his own fatal act in her murder.

The protagonist of Shutter Island, US Marshal Teddy Daniels, visits a psychiatric prison complex for the criminally insane to search for a missing patient while operating under his own agenda of finding Andrew Laeddis, his wife’s killer. This problematic boundary is discussed at length in Dennis Lehane’s thriller Shutter Island (2003) and in the Martin Scorsese film adaptation of the same name (2009). Pick up this book when you’ve set aside a long block of time for reading, because you will not want to put it down.The philosophical discussion of reason and the boundary between sanity and madness has been a contentious topic since long before the Enlightenment. Most importantly for a book so full of plot twists and riddles, the ending does not disappoint. Adept character development brings each person to life, and their complexities keep both Teddy and the reader guessing. Crawley, the Chief of Staff, a brilliant and compassionate psychiatrist, or a mad genius who will stop at nothing to protect his empire? Is Teddy here because he finagled the assignment, or did somebody summon him here, and why?ĭennis Lehane is a wonderful writer who manages to make the claustrophobic atmosphere at this isolated island prison frighteningly real.

And one of the patients just may be the pyromaniac who set the apartment fire that killed Teddy’s wife.Īs the investigation proceeds, the mystery deepens. Senator of his acquaintance is interested in the possibility of radical experimentation being performed on the incarcerated patients.

Marshal Teddy Daniels arrives at the federal hospital/prison to investigate the disappearance of a patient who escaped from a locked room, leaving no trace. This fast-paced and smartly plotted psychological thriller is set in 1954 on the grounds of the Ashecliffe Hospital for the criminally insane.

Shutter island de dennis lehane