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
Both Max Berenson and his receptionist have a cold. Max is initially hesitant to see Theo, fearing that he might be a journalist; Theo assures him he is not. As Max talks, Theo notes his office (wooden, traditional), and his appearance. Whereas Gabriel was handsome, Max is balding and unattractive. Max sees Theo looking at a picture of Gabriel on his desk, and he explains that while Gabriel was their parents’ biological child, Max was adopted.
Max is not a therapist, but he still is quick to link his differences with Gabriel to a childhood circumstance: namely that he was adopted (a fact he seems insecure about), while Gabriel was not.
Themes
Max tells Theo that he and Gabriel were close, but Gabriel “took center stage,” while Max was “overshadowed by him.” Theo tries to turn the topic of conversation to Alicia, but Max grows cold. Max gives rote answers to Theo’s questions, asserting that when he went to dinner with Gabriel and Alicia the night before the murder, the couple seemed completely normal. Max also advises Theo to talk to Jean-Felix, Alicia’s gallerist.
Max’s initial presentation of himself—of a loving brother, so completely devoted to Gabriel that he would defend his murderous wife—is at odds with the resentment that he expresses here. It is also worth noting that now, for the first time, someone other than Alicia comments on Gabriel’s many charms, affirming that Gabriel really was as magnetic as his wife believed.
Themes
After robotically insisting that he likes Alicia, Max confesses the truth: “I hated her…I loathed her.” He believes that Alicia robbed Gabriel of all his kindness and passion. Theo senses that Max is in real pain, and he wonders aloud how Max was able to defend Alicia in court given his feelings about her. Max explains that “it’s what Gabriel would have wanted.”
On the one hand, Max’s words make sense; of course, he would hate the woman who killed his brother. But in keeping with the thriller form of the novel, it is always possible that someone else could be implicated in Alicia’s crimes. Was Max really on Alicia’s side as her lawyer, or was he trying to frame her…or cover up something himself?
Themes
Finally, Max tells Theo that Alicia would often have violent mood swings, breaking things and threatening to kill Gabriel. As the meeting comes to a close, Max also tells Theo that Alicia tried to kill herself after her father died—several years before the murder. Max shoos Theo away, explaining that he and Tanya—the receptionist—have recently gotten married. They have theater tickets for later that night.
Alicia’s suicidal tendencies are not new—but why is there no record of that past attempt in the notes Diomedes has given Theo? On a formal level, Max’s reveal that he is married to Tanya shows that Michaelides is teaching his readers to look for clues in the most seemingly mundane sentences; a “family cold,” mentioned offhand in the beginning of the chapter, then allows readers to predict Max’s revelation that he is married to Tanya.
Themes
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On his way out, Tanya stops Theo and quietly whispers that he should talk to Paul Rose, Alicia’s cousin. “Ask him about Alicia and the night after the accident,” Tanya says. But before she can finish her sentence, she is interrupted by Max. Theo notes that Tanya is afraid of Max, and he wonders why that is.
Clearly, there is something Max does not want Theo to find out, fueling suspicion that he is not totally innocent or impartial. By ending the chapter in this way, the book foreshadows that Alicia’s friends and family are more sinister than they first appear.
Themes
