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
Theo interrupts Christian as he is eating take-out sushi, and Christian accuses him of being rude. But Theo has a trump card: Alicia’s diary. Almost immediately, it is clear that Christian is the very same Dr. West in the diary—and that he has kept this secret from the Grove.
Part 1 of the novel began with an epigraph from Freud about how difficult it is for someone to keep a secret. In Part 4, Christian’s misdeeds come to light, suggesting that the tragic, penultimate section of the book will also be a revelatory one, in which everything that is hidden comes to the fore.
Themes
Christian explains that he treated Alicia unofficially, as a favor to his friend Gabriel. Theo also finds out that Christian would get paid in cash for these sessions (and possibly more), not declaring the income. Theo agrees to keep Christian’s secret from Diomedes, saving Christian his job—as long as Christian shares everything he knows about Alicia.
At least in this moment, it seems that Christian’s secret was a financial one rather than an interpersonal one; if Christian really was just trying to evade taxes, it is unlikely he stalked Alicia or murdered Gabriel.
Themes
