Idealism in Shutter Island

Minds and Machines Assignment

Fatima El Amine; ID: 201807210

This paper will analyze the movie “Shutter Island” from an Idealism point of view.

Movie Summary

Shutter Island is a movie and a psychological thriller starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Andrew

Laeddis. The events revolve around Andrew, who was a Federal US Marshal, and his friend

Chuck, as they investigate the disappearance of a patient from Ashecliffe Mental Facility on

Shutter Island. This institution is home to one of the most violent and dangerous patients in the

country. It is important to mention that Andrew served in the military during World War II in a

concentration camp in Germany, and consequently has been through lots of painful and

frightening experiences.

The movie blurs the lines between reality and delusion. Andrew seemed to be haunted by his

eventful past and consequently struggling in that island looking for answers; especially after he

suspected a conspiracy when he noticed that the staff and the doctors were being secretive.

Towards the end of the movie, and in a shocking twist, the movie reveals that Andrew is in fact

just another sick patient in the mental facility since he has shot and killed his wife after she

drowned and killed their three children. The movie mentions that his wife was suicidal and

“insane”. As a result, his brain filtered out these painful events, so he became so delusional to the

point where he completely forgot about killing his wife, he even forgot his own name and
thought it was Teddy Daniels. Andrew couldn’t forgive himself for his crime, so he created an

alternative life in his own mind where he believed that he was a hero and still a Marshal who was

sent to that mental institution for the purpose of investigating the disappearance and escape of

the patient “Rachel Solando”, who turned out to be not even real and completely imaginary.

Later on, it was revealed that his partner, Chuck, is in fact his primary psychiatrist. This movie

raises questions of reality, truth, and perception.

Idealism in Shutter Island

Idealism is a monist theory that states that reality is only reality of minds, and that the material

world is an illusion. Consequently, only souls and their contents exist. It also states that objects

are defined in meaning in terms of mental states. All one can be sure of is their own experiences

of things. The meaning of objects and events in the movie is directly linked to Andrew’s mental

states. For example, the lighthouse that appeared in the movie may seem to us as just a physical

object that serves a certain function, but to Andrew it perhaps represented clarity. Applying the

approach of idealism to the movie “Shutter Island” means that we view its events as merely

contents of the mind. Everything is an illusion, nothing more than dreams or hallucinations.

When everything is only contents of the mind, then reality is subjective to the individual. The

events of the movie, before tuning out to be hallucinations inside Andrew’s mind, were very

convincing up until the very end. Most of the events were nothing but manifestations of

Andrew’s mind. One could not distinguish between what was reality and what was delusion until

the final part of the film. In his mind, Andrew seemed to be living a reality constructed by his

own mind, as he was convinced that he was in investigator in a mental facility and that Chuck

was his partner; he also filtered out the fact that he killed his wife. The reality that he lived and
the external world that he perceived were only the products of his own mind, which is consistent

with idealism. The entire narrative of Shutter Island was nothing but a construct of Andrew’s

mind. His experiences of the events in the mental facility, in addition to the characters that he

encounters, can be seen as elaborate and prolonged mental creations. Moreover, the complexities

of the events, in addition to the place, and characters of the movie, including the staff and

patients, mirror the complexities of the mind, specifically Andrew’s mind. In summary, the fact

that viewers would not be able to tell or distinguish between what is “real” and what is a mind

product aligns well with the core idealistic perspective.

Opinion

Idealism states that objects are defined in meaning in terms of mental states. I value the

elegant simplicity inherent in idealism in its attempt to understand the world and the mind. Since

idealists believe that there is no material reality, idealists state that there is no causal interaction

between minds and material objects as well. Only minds and their contents exist. This viewpoint

removes the necessity of struggling with issues related to causation. Very much straight forward.

Moreover, idealism is in fact consistent with the evidence available to us today. Accepting a

world made entirely of minds and their contents provides us with a simplified, easy and coherent

explanation for a wide range of events and experiences, as it allows us to study the world and our

experiences without the difficulties that would have been introduced had there been material

objects. Idealism is very simple, unlike parallelism and occasionalism that complicate the picture

to explain causation. The theory explains things by appealing to few principles, rather than being
complicated. All in all, this simplicity speaks to me. It’s always reasonable to choose theories

that are simple and elegant.

This paper analyzed the movie “Shutter Island” from an idealism point of view.