Brainwashed by a Crazy

     I have never been more excited for English class than I have in the past three days. Shutter Island is my absolute favorite movie of all time! I think it is so thought out and extremely brilliant. I remember the first time I saw the movie I was completely lost. I had no idea the significance of Teddy Daniels’ flashbacks or why he always saw hallucinations of his wife with a little girl. When the doctor revealed that Teddy Daniels was in fact Andrew Laidus, I did not believe it for a second. I had my mind set on the fact that they were just trying to brainwash him. I thought it was out of sheer coincidence that the name Edward Daniels spells Andrew Laidus and that Rachel Solando spells Doloroes Chanal. I was rooting for Teddy to kill the doctors and free all the patients who suffered. I remember looking next to me at my friend in the theaters and saying, “This is all just part of their evil plan.” It wasn’t until the end of the movie when the doctors say it didn’t work and he goes back to calling Dr. Sheehan “boss” that I believed what they said was true. I think it is amazing how the producers get into your mind to make you believe the crazy person. This factor really relates to One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I believe one of Kesey’s purposes in writing this novel was to show people that the outside world is just as crazy as the inside world (the insane). Shutter Island makes viewers believe that the patients are not really insane, that the people from the outside world perform surgeries on normal people to make them crazy. Both the film and the novel suggest parallels to show that the “sane” are just as crazy as the “insane.”