Introduction
There are different ways in which denarration is used in Shutter Island. As an act of negating or denying something, it is demonstrated by Teddy, the main character. Any time Teddy denies something that was stated or somehow expressed before, it makes the audience suspicious of him, thinking that he might not be a reliable narrator. Therefore, one purpose of denarration in this movie is to confuse viewers and make them wonder which perspective is right, Teddy’s or that of the hospital’s employees. Denarration also manifests itself in the fact that Teddy struggles to identify past and present events as reality or a part of delusion.
Denarration in The Last House on the Needless Street and Shutter Island
Another important way denarration is used in Shutter Island is through creating unsettling feeling that characterizes the movie. Similar to The Last House on the Needless Street, the darkness of the movie is based on the uncertainty and ambiguity of the events described. This causes confusion as viewers do not fully understand the sequence of events presented on the screen and feel that the narrator is becoming less and less trustworthy as the story progresses.
It is also important to mention that denarration is used to represent Teddy’s attempts to negate his traumatic past. The death of his children and him murdering his wife were extremely traumatic experiences for him. It is later revealed that Teddy’s entire delusion about being a U.S. marshal and investigating an inmate’s disappearance was based on his unsettling desire to avoid thinking about these traumatic experiences and constantly reliving them.
The use of denarration in the movie is thus interconnected with trauma theory, as Teddy’s traumatic past creates temporal gaps and a dissolution of the self. This is what causes his lack of certainty in the events that happen to him. Another element of the trauma theory found in the movie is the unwanted epiphany that Teddy experiences towards the end. One scene can be analyzed to describe this: the moment when Dr. Crawley meets Teddy in the lighthouse, where the latter discovers that he had been a patient of the hospital for two years. Teddy does not believe this first, as his memories are still negated by the unconscious will to avoid his traumatic past. When he discovers that his real name is Andrew Laeddis, his alternate personality begins to give way to those memories, and viewers can see him struggling as these memories return to him. As a result, he starts to remember the horrific events he had experienced and the awful thing he had done. It can be argued that in this scene, Andrew’s real personality eventually takes over his alter Teddy.
Since Gothic is a narrative of trauma, elements of this style are found in Teddy’s story as well. For example, mourning for the lost objects is one of the factors that define his condition. Having lost his wife and children, he finds it unbearable to be the same person; therefore, he creates and alternate personality as an escape. Another Gothic element found in the movie as well as in Ward’s novel are the so called epistemological blank spots. As he escapes from the reality and from his real persona, Teddy has frequent moments when he forgets various facts about his own life.
Conclusion
It can be concluded that many elements found in The Last House on the Needless Street are also present in Shutter Island. These include Gothic elements, such as epistemological blank spots and mourning the lost objects, and elements of trauma theory, such as the dissolution of self, caused by the need to avoid one’s traumatic past. Finally, the representations of trauma in both the novel and the movie utilize denarration, which allows the main characters to distance themselves from their traumatic experiences.