Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Three-Body Problem, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Technology, Progress, and Destruction
Scientific Discovery and Political Division
Trauma and Cyclical Harm
Theory vs. Lived Experience
History and Legacy
Summary
Analysis
It’s 1967, the peak of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and two factions of communist revolutionaries are in a standoff. The older revolutionaries look with fear on the younger revolutionaries; the younger group is like a “pack of wolves on hot coals, crazier than crazy.” Besides, while the older fighters only have guns, the young fighters have explosives, which could be detonated at any time. A beautiful teenage girl stands on top of a building and waves a flag. Moments later, she is shot and killed. Yet the girl dies happily, believing that she is “passionately sacrificing herself for an ideal.”
The Cultural Revolution was a period of tremendous upheaval in China, as different groups of young people accused each other and their elders of disloyalty to the communist government. By starting its narrative in 1967, at the peak of the violence, the novel shows just how divisive and violent humanity can become; even the most seemingly youthful and innocent members of society are capable of great destruction.
Themes
Around the same time, young revolutionary students at Tsinghua University (in Beijing) are rebelling against their teachers, whom they label as “bourgeois reactionary academic authorities.” Many of the professors have either killed themselves or abandoned their beliefs when faced with this mass humiliation and torture. But Ye Zhetai, a brilliant physics professor, refuses to bend to the demands of the Cultural Revolution. To get him to change his mind, his former students are forcing him into a “struggle session,” in which he is physically tormented while the entire student body watches.
Historically, many of the worst atrocities in the Cultural Revolution were directed at academics, in part because academia values ideological complexity—and China’s communist party wanted no such nuance. For Chinese intellectuals in this era, therefore, the Revolution became a question of choosing either abstract, philosophical, belief or immediate safety. Most professors chose safety; that Ye Zhetai prioritizes his beliefs speaks to his extraordinary integrity and strength.
Themes
A group of two college-aged men and four high school girls accosts Ye Zhetai with accusations. When he remains silent, the girls bring Ye Zhetai’s wife, Shao Lin, onstage. Shao has turned against her husband, and she berates him for teaching Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity because it is “anti-dialectical” and therefore against communism. While Shao humiliates him, Ye reflects on the fact that his wife has always been “too smart” to work as a theorist. Specifically, she has always been too attuned to the political implications of scientific thought. For example, in the years leading up to the Cultural Revolution, she began changing the names of theorems to fit the accepted political narrative.
Shao Lin’s betrayal of her husband epitomizes a phenomenon that was common throughout the Cultural Revolution; families were often split either by ideological differences or by one person’s decision to protect themselves at the expense of another. It is also worth noting the idea that theory, even at its most advanced, requires a special kind of naivete. Whereas Ye Zhetai often gets lost in the abstract principles of his work, Shao Lin understands that these ideas are only one part of the equation—unlike her husband, she remains attuned to the real-life context of her work in addition to the work itself.
Themes
In reality, though, Shao’s father (a wealthy, prominent scholar in pre-revolutionary China) met Einstein in person, a meeting he considered the definitive moment of his life. Rather than discussing physics, the two men talked about the starving child they encountered on their path. Later, Shao’s father would muse that “in China, any idea that dared to take flight would only crash back to the ground. The gravity of reality is too strong.”
Even though Einstein is one of the scientists most associated with progress and discovery, his first appearance in the book is tied not to human success but to human failure; scientists can conceptualize relativity, but they cannot figure out how to prevent children from starving. This passage also begins to contrast the theoretical “flights” of abstract scientific work with the heavy complexity of “reality.”
Themes
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The students at Tsinghua begin to beat Ye Zhetai with a copper belt. As they do so, Shao and her husband debate whether philosophy or experiment should guide scientific theory. Ye Zhetai believes that “truth emerges from experiences,” whereas Shao and the students argue that “it should be the correct philosophy of Marxism that guides scientific experiments.”
This harrowing scene spotlights the novel’s focus on the gap between theory and real experience. Whereas the communists want to promote simple, incontestable ideology, Ye Zhetai emphasizes the importance of “experience”—of confusing, lived-in “truth.” Only ideas built on observation and daily life, Ye Zhetai believes, can have real meaning.
Themes
The girls double down on their interrogation of Ye Zhetai. As they fight over the Big Bang Theory, Ye Zhetai admits that he believes in the possibility of a god. This further inflames the revolutionaries, who believe that religion is antithetical to communism. Pushed into a frenzy, the young girls begin to attack Ye Zhetai. Within minutes, Ye Zhetai is dead. Shao Lin begins to cackle as if she has lost her mind, while the rest of the students flee the auditorium. Only one person remains—Ye Wenjie, Ye Zhetai’s daughter.
There are several notable things happening in this scene. First, this is the first time the characters start to question whether there is other intelligent life in the universe—a question that will prove essential throughout the book. But more than that, this exchange is notable for its suggestion that human beings, when faced with things they do not understand, turn not to collaboration but to anger and violence. And finally, this moment marks the introduction of Ye Wenjie, as she witnesses not only her father’s death but her mother’s participation in it.
Themes
Left alone, Ye Wenjie finds that “the thoughts she could not voice dissolved into her blood, where they would stay with her for the rest of her life.” She tries to go home, but when she does so, she only hears her mother Shao’s insane laughter. Instead, she goes to the house where her former advisor Professor Ruan lives. Like Ye Zhetai, Ruan has been tortured for her beliefs; the revolutionaries have tormented her for wearing heels and smeared lipstick across her face. When Ye Wenjie arrives at Ruan’s house, she sees that Ruan has taken her own life. She also sees that Ruan chose to wear lipstick and heels when she died.
In this critical quotation, the experience of trauma literally reshapes Ye; after watching her father be beaten to death, betrayal and despair will be in Ye’s “blood” forever. Without anyone to trust or confide in, Ye can never leave her trauma in her past, and instead it must “stay with her,” informing her every decision and response. It is also worth noting the simple but symbolic resistance of Professor Ruan wearing the very items she was targeted for at the moment of her suicide; though the gesture is small, it demonstrates her tenacity in the face of powerful force.
Themes
