58 pages • 1 hour read
Dennis LehaneShutter Island
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2003A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Prologue Summary
The novel begins with an excerpted journal entry dated May 3rd, 1993 from Dr. Lester Sheehan, a former psychologist who worked at Ashecliffe Hospital, a government facility for the criminally insane. Sheehan explains that Ashecliffe Hospital was located on Shutter Island, a small island off the United States mainland, and was housed in old military barracks that dated back to the Civil War. While Ashecliffe Hospital might not “look like much” from a distance, Sheehan’s entry makes it clear that he is still haunted by his experiences there (3). With his wife dying of a terminal illness and his own mental faculties starting to fade, Sheehan decides to share the events of September 1954. The rest of Shutter Island tells the story of four people—Teddy Daniels, Dolores Chanal, Rachel Soldano, and Andrew Laeddis—and the “havoc they wreaked” over the course of four days on Shutter Island (4).
Prologue Analysis
The prologue of Shutter Island is initially confusing. Sheehan begins the Prologue by mentioning the failing health of his family before launching into a description of Shutter Island and its population of rats. Only at the end of the prologue does Sheehan’s purpose become clearer: he intends to tell the harrowing story of Teddy Daniels, Dolores Chanal, Rachel Solando, and Andrew Laeddis. But by the end of the prologue, readers are left with more questions than answers. Why is Sheehan sharing this story now, nearly forty years after September 1954? Why does he digress about the history of the island? And more importantly, who are these four people whose actions impacted Sheehan so deeply that he feels like he “never left” Ashecliffe (4)?
Lehane’s Shutter Island is a psychological thriller, and the “more-questions-than-answers” format of the Prologue is a hallmark of a genre that combines mystery, and horror to create a psychologically-driven, suspenseful narrative. Psychological thrillers create suspense by focusing on the inner workings of their characters rather than relying on external or situational crises. A combination of complex plotting and psychological tension heightens the suspense of the novel; because of this, psychological thrillers are known for keeping readers guessing until the plot resolves at the very end of the story. By introducing so many unanswered questions from Shutter Island’s very first page, Lehane embraces the conventions of the genre and sets the stage for the story to come.
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By Dennis Lehane
