A U.S. Marshal goes to a strange hospital to find a missing patient — and finds a shocking truth about himself. The real medical history is true.
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These are the new words. Match each word (1–8) to its meaning (A–H). Say your answers out loud — "I think 1 is C" — then check.
1 = C (a hospital) · 2 = D (a patient) · 3 = F (a storm) · 4 = B (a doctor)
5 = H (a memory) · 6 = A (the truth) · 7 = G (a war) · 8 = E (a mind)
Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island (2010), from the novel by Dennis Lehane. Read each part. Then try the questions from memory, and talk about the last one. (There are spoilers — that is fine, we want to talk about it. This story is about mental illness and loss, so we tell it gently, without difficult details.)
In 1954, a U.S. marshal called Teddy Daniels travels by boat to Shutter Island with his new partner, Chuck. On the island there is a special hospital called Ashecliffe, for patients with serious mental illness. Teddy and Chuck must find a missing patient named Rachel. She disappeared from a locked room, and nobody knows how.
Teddy has bad headaches. He also has a second reason to be there: he wants to find a man called Andrew Laeddis. Teddy believes this man killed his wife in a fire.
1. Why do Teddy and Chuck go to Shutter Island?
2. What does Teddy want to do, apart from his job?
1. They go to find a missing patient named Rachel, who disappeared from a locked room.
2. He wants to find a man called Andrew Laeddis, who he believes killed his wife.
A big storm hits the island, and no boats can leave. Strange things start to happen. Teddy finds a secret note from another patient. He also starts to see things from his past: memories of war, and visions of his wife, who is no longer alive.
Then Chuck disappears. Teddy cannot find him anywhere. Teddy starts to think the hospital is hiding something terrible — maybe dangerous experiments on the patients. He does not know who he can trust any more.
1. What happens to Chuck?
2. What does Teddy start to believe about the hospital?
1. He disappears, and Teddy cannot find him.
2. Teddy believes the hospital is secretly doing dangerous experiments on patients.
At the end, Teddy finds a lighthouse. There, a doctor named Cawley tells him a shocking truth. Teddy is not really a marshal. His real name is Andrew Laeddis, and he is a patient at the hospital.
Two years before, Andrew's wife became very ill in her mind, and in a terrible moment, their three children died. When Andrew found her, he could not bear it, and he killed her.
Andrew's mind could not accept what had happened. So it built a new story: a marshal called Teddy, looking for a man called Andrew Laeddis, and a missing patient called Rachel — who was really his wife all along. "Chuck" was not really his partner. He was Andrew's own doctor, Dr Sheehan. The hospital tried a new kind of treatment: they let Andrew live inside his story completely, hoping this would finally help him understand the truth.
For a moment, Andrew seems to understand. But the next day, he calls Sheehan "Chuck" again, as if the truth has slipped away. As the staff take him to the lighthouse, he asks one last, quiet question: would it be worse to live as a monster, or to die as a good man?
1. Who is Teddy really, and what happened to his wife and children?
2. Who was "Chuck" really?
1. He is Andrew Laeddis, a patient. His wife was very ill and their three children died; in his grief and shock, he killed her.
2. He was Andrew's real doctor, Dr Sheehan, helping with a new kind of treatment.
This is a story about the past, so it needs the past simple tense — the tense we use to tell a story simply, step by step.
Complete each sentence with the past simple of the verb in brackets.
1. Teddy and Chuck (arrive) on the island by boat.
2. The doctors (question) Teddy about his headaches.
3. A big storm (trap) everyone on the island.
1. arrived
2. questioned
3. trapped
Complete each sentence with the past simple of the verb in brackets.
1. Teddy (think) something was very wrong.
2. He (find) a hidden note from another patient.
3. In the end, the doctor (tell) him the truth.
1. thought
2. found
3. told
Fill each gap with the past simple. Read it aloud when you finish.
Teddy and Chuck (arrive) at Ashecliffe Hospital. They (ask) many questions about the missing patient. Then a storm (come), and strange things (happen). At the end, Teddy (learn) a very sad truth about himself.
arrived · asked · came · happened · learned
Notice: arrived, asked, happened, learned are regular (-ed); came is irregular.
The story itself is fiction, from a novel. But the film is set at a real moment in medical history, and it uses some real, true events.
In 1954, doctors began using a new medicine called Thorazine. It helped patients with serious mental illness in a much safer way. Before this medicine, doctors sometimes used a very old, dangerous brain operation called a lobotomy. The film is set at exactly the moment when the old, dangerous treatment was starting to disappear, and the new medicine was arriving.
A real doctor named Walter Freeman made this operation fast and simple in 1945. He did it more than 3,000 times between the 1930s and the 1960s. But by the mid-1950s, doctors saw that it hurt many patients badly, and the new medicine, Thorazine, gave a much safer choice. So the old operation quickly became rare.
Andrew's memories of war are based on something real: in April 1945, American soldiers freed a Nazi prison camp called Dachau, and found terrible things there. Many soldiers were deeply affected by what they saw. But in 1954, there was no medical name yet for this kind of trauma. Doctors only officially recognised it — and called it PTSD — in 1980. Before that, people used older, simpler words, like "shell shock." So a man like Andrew would have had almost no help for what he was feeling inside.
Do all three tasks out loud. Use the timer to keep talking.
Tell the story of Shutter Island in your own words. Use these steps to help you: a marshal and his partner arrive at a strange hospital → they look for a missing patient → a storm comes, and strange things happen → at the lighthouse, Teddy learns the shocking truth about himself.
Try to use some key words (hospital, patient, storm, doctor, memory, truth, war, mind) and the past simple tense.
The doctors did not tell Andrew the truth directly. Instead, they let him live inside his own story. Was this the right thing to do? What would you do if you were his doctor?
Talk about memory and truth.
Not sure what to say? Choose one: