Teddy arrives sea-sick after having made it to the island on a boat, as he would with his trauma, but this is unknown to the audience at this time. Marshal Edward Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio), who arrives on Shutter Island, a former military prison but now a mental institution. Indeed, per IndieWire, answers to Shutter Island's ending are still being pondered over. Set in 1954, ‘Shutter Island’ begins with U.S. It has a clear thematic meaning and presents possible questions that linger with you after each viewing. One could forever talk about this ending and what it represents, but it's not unclear or lazy. We know Leaddis is going to be lobotomized, but the question is how much agency and choice he has in his own madness. The ending has closure for the character, even if we, as the audience, don't. The strength of an ending like this is the fact that you can never be 100% sure. Perhaps Andrew is mostly delusional, but the comment about dying a good man is a moment of clarity in an otherwise confused haze. That said, it's not necessarily a strict binary.

and Barry awards for Best Novel, and the Massachusetts Book Award in Fiction. Hope is, nonetheless, restored to the viewers when in an intimate moment of stolen lucidity, Leaddis confesses to Sheehan that he is intentional about his indulgence in his delusions. Marshal Teddy Daniels has come to Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe.

The ending scene proposes that unless the protagonist faces his trauma head-on, this repetitive cycle of mental illness will be perpetuated. As Andrew could not forget his guilt, he fled to another stream of reality in which he was shielded from facing his tragic trauma.

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