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 narrator resolves to begin at the beginning, explaining the facts without editorializing. He describes Alicia’s Alcestis: it is a picture of Alicia painting, naked, her brush red with paint or blood. In the painting, Alicia looks out at the viewer, her mouth open—but she is mute. The painting’s title is an allusion to a Greek myth, in which Alcestis volunteers to give her life for her husband Admetus.
In a story so concerned with secrecy, the narrator—who still has yet to identify himself—makes a point of framing himself as trustworthy. He also offers readers insight into Alicia’s allusion: “Alcestis” is a painting about silence, but it is also a painting about betrayal (as Admetus betrays Alcestis by sacrificing her).
Themes
While the trial was still ongoing, Alicia’s gallerist Jean-Felix Martin made the controversial decision to exhibit the painting. The narrator explains that he often went to the gallery while the painting was still on exhibit. But while he felt sympathetic to Alicia, most of the other viewers saw her only as a “cold-blooded bitch.” After all, Alicia had been found alone with the body; her fingerprints were the only fingerprints on the gun. There was no doubt that Alicia had committed the crime—the only question was why.
Here, the novel makes its formal trick clearer: rather than asking who has committed the crime, as a standard mystery might, this story asks why the crime has been committed. Author Michaelides often describes the book as a “psychological detective story” for this very reason—it is not about gathering evidence against Alicia so much as it is about unpacking her troubled mind.
Themes
At trial, Alicia’s lawyers put in a plea of diminished responsibility, citing her long history of mental health problems. The judge was especially convinced by Professor Lazarus Diomedes, director of a psychological unit known as the Grove, who argued that Alicia’s silence was proof of her insanity. Ultimately, the judge ordered Alicia to be housed at the Grove under Diomedes’s care.
Alicia had already tried to kill herself; to Diomedes, her silence is further proof of her lack of a will to live. For Diomedes (and for the judge), then, Alicia’s crime reflects a troubled mental state, not a rational person trying to get ahead.
Themes
If Alicia had been faking her silence, wouldn’t she have started speaking after the trial? But instead, she remained silent for years, and the public quickly lost interest in the whole thing. However, the (still unnamed) narrator remained fascinated by Alicia’s case. As a forensic psychotherapist, he was able to apply for a job at the Grove, in the hopes of taking Alicia’s care into his own hands. “Something about Alicia’s story resonated with me personally,” he admits; “I felt a profound empathy with her right from the start.”
Any case that involves a famous artist murdering her famous photographer husband would draw public interest. But there is a stark difference between the general public’s view of the case and the narrator’s approach to it. Whereas most people are repulsed by Alicia, the narrator identifies with her, feeling “profound empathy” with this complete stranger. That level of identification suggests that maybe the narrator is not as unbiased as he claims to be.
Themes
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