Shutter Island Literary Elements

Crime Fiction

Early 1950s, Shutter Island, tropical island off the American coast

Third party narrator telling the story from Teddy Daniels' point of view

Dark and threatening

Teddy is the protagonist, Dr. Cawley the antagonist

Conflict between Teddy and Cawley over whether he is Andrew Laeddis and whether he is actually a US Marshal, and whose version of events is correct

Cawley tells Teddy that Teddy himself is Andrew Llaeddis, the man he claims to be looking for

Teddy discovering that Chuck has gone missing foreshadows that his allies are disappearing

The patients are said to be agitated, which is a large understatement as they are all psychotic and are most pathologically dangerously of the mentally ill prison population

Teddy compares Chuck and himself to Stan and Olly, likening them to the comic duo Laurel and Hardy and putting himself in the role of sidekick

"An entire tree swept past the door, upside down, its roots sprouting upward like horns"

The speed of something as enormous as a tree flying by emphasizes the power of the storm and the threat to the safety of Chuck and Teddy, also suggesting the damage it will do to the landscape of the island.

Teddy is seeking Andrew Laeddis, but paradoxically he is in fact unable to escape him—because according to Dr. Cawley he himself is Laeddis.

There is a parallel between the zombie-like of the prisoners that Teddy remembers having liberated from Dachau, and the over-medicated patients he sees at Shutter Island

"The island was agitated" - the island is a metonym for the patients held captive on it

The men joke that the tree that has been swept into the ocean will wake up in the middle of the night and say "Wait a second. This isn't right," giving the tree the power of thought and also the ability to sleep and wake up.