Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Silent Patient, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Empathy, Identification, and Boundaries
Tragedy and Destiny
Honesty vs. Deception
Childhood Trauma
Silence vs. “The Talking Cure”
Summary
Analysis
The epigraph to Part 1 is a Sigmund Freud quote about how nobody can keep a secret. But there is nothing secretive about the chapter’s opening line: “Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband.” Both Alicia and Gabriel were artists—Alicia painted, and Gabriel took photos of “semi-naked women.” The first-person narrator, who has yet to identify himself, remarks that he thinks Alicia is a more talented artist than her husband.
Like the prologue, the first chapter makes ample use of juxtaposition. The epigraph, from famed psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, suggests that secrecy and deception will be major issues in the book. But the reveal, right off the bat, that Alicia is her husband’s murderer, complicates things—mysteries normally hinge on a whodunit, but there is no question about who the culprit is here.
Themes
Gabriel’s murder happened 6 years ago, when he was 44. The murder occurred on August 25th, the hottest day of an unusually hot summer in London. Gabriel had spent the day shooting a cover for Vogue magazine; not much is known about what Alicia had been doing. On the night of the murder, Gabriel arrived home at 11 p.m. At 11:30, the Berensons’ next-door neighbor Barbie Hellman heard gunshots and called the police.
These are the facts of the case, but though this is the sort of information police officers might rely on, very little is clear about either Alicia or Gabriel’s motivations. This kind of evidentiary detective work is diametrically opposed to the kind of therapeutic searching that will happen later in the story.
Themes
When the officers arrived, Alicia was frozen in shock. A gun was on the floor nearby, and Gabriel had been shot multiple times in the face. There was blood everywhere, some of it Gabriel’s, and some of it Alicia’s—she had slit her wrists. When the officers tried to rush her to the hospital, Alicia did her best to fight them off; only after great struggle were the officers able to bring Alicia to safety.
Alicia is suicidal—and not only does she want to end her life, but she wants to do it so badly that she actually fights against the officers who have come to help her. Symbolically, the fact that Gabriel’s blood mixes with Alicia’s blood suggest that both spouses have been deeply wounded by this crime.
Themes
From the day of the murder on, Alicia never spoke again. Her silence made the case a matter of great public interest, which only increased when she began painting again. In just a few short days, she had completed a haunting self-portrait titled Alcestis.
Alicia’s silence is a mirror to Alcestis’s (“Why does she not speak?”). But despite her muteness, Alicia is trying to communicate, using her non-verbal art-making—her painting—to give viewers clues to her mental state.
Themes
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