Monsters in Disguise
Dying can be quite terrifying to some people while others understand that it’s going to happen someday and they have accepted it. What the majority of the population on this planet doesn’t except, and quite frankly are terrified of, is a death that was intentionally caused due to another living thing. This terror originates all the way back to the first horror story that we were told as a child. These stories stuck with us and implanted into our mind; stories about ghosts, vampires, rapists, the grim reaper, you name it. Why might one tell stories of these monsters, watch movies about them, and even read about? It’s for the thrill of terror that sends adrenaline through our blood, haunts our minds, and makes us cringe every time there is an unfamiliar sound. The fear can be so intense and so real, which is why many crave the feeling of a fright. Some may crave it until the day they come home and find their children drowned in a lake with their wife over looking the scene, smiling. The last person somebody would expect to involve themselves in such monstrous activities is exactly the person it ends up being. In return the so-called “normal” person tries to cope with the incident and becomes a monster themself; which is the ultimate monster: a monster that ends in the creation of a new monster. This sequence was portrayed in Martin Scorsese’s film, Shutter Island; Dolores was the wife who purposely murdered her three children and Teddy Daniels was the husband who came home from work to find this tragedy. Reasons as to why people may kill their children can bewilder our minds and many cannot understand the connections of a psychological disorder to make someone do so. Dolores was certainly under these unfortunate circumstances. She was a mother of three and a wife to one, Teddy Daniels. Teddy came home one day and found Dolores overlooking their 3 drowned kids. These incidents are what we call today postpartum depression; a depression typically of a woman who has recently given birth to a child, the fluctuating hormones in the women’s body cause this (Postpartum Depression). Hippocrates recorded similar cases such as these in 700 BC; he wrote about women who would experience a wide range of emotions after their pregnancy. It wasn’t until the 1850’s when medical professionals recognized it as a disorder, and they didn’t try treatments for this until the early 1900’s (Wolf). Most cases involve the typical symptoms such as: sadness, decreased energy, fatigue, and separated from the world. Then there are the rare cases, which involve postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis; which includes the depression along with psychotic episodes (Postpartum Psychosis). Dolores had a massive psychotic episode in which she killed her children.
At the moment she committed those actions was the moment she became a monster. One doesn’t become a monster until they physically do or say something that could effect the actions of another. One can simply have the potential to be a monster because of the thoughts in their head or what they do when others aren’t around, but they don’t become one until the moment others start noticing the differences. Teddy didn’t recognize Delores’s actions until he found out that Dolores killed their three children and it was at that moment when Dolores became a monster. The intriguing part behind this mess is that the majority of Dolores’s life; she lived a relatively typical life. She didn’t have psychotic breaks and she didn’t want to kill anyone, especially her children. She was one of us, the “normal” ones. This can all change within a matter of minutes. Shoot, this could even happen in a matter of seconds, depending on the severity of the incident. Furthermore, to look at this in perspective, this gives each one of us on the planet the same capabilities as Dolores. If our bodies don’t fluctuate hormones properly, or if were go through a traumatic experience, we could, too,