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
When Theo arrives home, Kathy is out. He tries to access her email again, but she has been careful to log out. For a moment, Theo wonders if he made it all up: was he just high? Is Kathy just getting in character to play Desdemona in Othello? Though their married life has continued on more or less as normal, Theo is now consumed by anxiety. He obsesses over whether Kathy loves her paramour—will she leave Theo for him?
For the first time, the novel makes explicit the link between one person’s dishonesty and another person’s crumbling mental state. Kathy is lying, but Theo internalizes her deceit as his own insanity, questioning himself instead of forcing himself to believe that his beloved could hurt him. Also important: Shakespeare’s Othello is a story about a jealous man named Othello who, prodded by a scheming underling, starts to suspect his (innocent) wife Desdemona of adultery.
Themes
Kathy notices that something is wrong, but Theo waves her off. He asks about rehearsals, and Kathy mentions that the play’s director, Tony, has had some good ideas recently. Theo wonders if Tony is the person Kathy is sleeping with; she idolizes him, and she has always been reluctant to introduce him to Theo. Kathy goes to take a bath, and Theo tries to check her email again, to no avail. When she returns, Kathy announces that a friend is visiting, and she is going to meet her. Theo sees his chance—he will follow Kathy and catch her in the act.
Every relationship or action in Kathy’s life is now cause for suspicion: is she lying about how she spends her time at work? Is her friend actually a friend, or is she sneaking out to meet her lover? Theo’s obsessiveness, which readers have already seen in his relationship with Alicia, now invades his marriage, bending reality as he panics about Kathy’s actions.
Themes
