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
As soon as Wang logs off, he gets a call from Shi asking him to come to his office. When he arrives, he is met by computer specialist Xu Bingbing and Wei Cheng, Shen Yufei’s spacey husband. Wei explains that his life is in danger, though General Chang and the rest of the Battle Command Center do not know this yet. At Shi’s urging, Wei begins to tell Wang his life story.
It is probably no accident that this phone call arrives as soon as Wang beats the Three Body game’s first level. Instead, the immediacy of the events—and the fact that all of these various characters know each other—suggests that Wang is involved in something much larger and more omnipresent than he realizes.
Themes
As Wei tells it, he was always a lazy person, ever since childhood. Though he had an amazing, inborn aptitude for geometry—shapes immediately became numbers in his mind—he was too lazy to ever apply this gift. Eventually, Wei got a series of degrees, but when he finally got a job at a college, he was too bored to take teaching seriously. Instead, he went to a Buddhist monastery to find some peace and meaning in his life. The abbot at the monastery encouraged Wei to embrace his sense of emptiness: “you must use this existential emptiness to fill yourself.”
There is a fascinating parallel between Wei Cheng’s description of his life and Yang Dong’s almost fanatical dedication to her theory. For both characters, experiences pale next to the fascinating ins and outs of theory. But for both, while theory can be engrossing, it cannot take away the “existential emptiness” created by a lack of human connection.
Themes
As he fell asleep that night, Wei imagined a sphere to symbolize his emptiness. When that initial empty sphere reminded him of death, he pictured a second sphere. Unfortunately, in this image, the spheres’ separate gravities always pulled them into a stable rotation around each other, which also made Wei think of death. Only when he introduced a third sphere into his mind did the emptiness take on unpredictability and a kind of life. The three spheres danced in Wei’s mind until he fell asleep.
Ironically, Wei shuts himself off from many of the pleasures of life, only finding real meaning through mathematics. Unlike most mathematical thinkers, however, Wei finds joy and excitement in unpredictability—only when geometric theory denies him easy answers does it start to become as textured as lived experience.
Themes
Wei had effectively discovered the three-body problem on his own. Though years earlier, a mathematician named Henri Poincaré had declared the problem unsolvable, Wei believed a new kind of approach might work—namely, an evolutionary algorithm. Such an algorithm would at each moment lay out the options for what could happen next in the three bodies’ motions, and it would “preserve the advantaged” possibilities over the disadvantaged ones in order to form more accurate predictions.
The idea of an evolutionary algorithm further links what Wei studies to life and human experience; evolution is a theory that comes out of natural science and that is meant to describe the way organisms grow and change. Wei’s solution to the three-body problem is therefore incredibly complicated: rather than providing a blanket template like Copernicus did, Wei’s equation must be constantly updated as it “evolves.”
Themes
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Such an algorithm would take a tremendous amount of computing power, and Wei only had paper at the monastery. Still, Wei worked tirelessly, discarding his notes as he went. A few days later, a young woman—Shen Yufei—came to Wei’s room, holding his scrap paper and telling him he was “brilliant.” Shen promised to help Wei get the computing power he needed to work on the three-body problem. Wei felt stirrings of attraction for Shen.
Most of the couples in the novel are linked by science: Shao Lin and Ye Zhetai, Ye Wenjie and Yang Weining, Yang Dong and Ding Yi, and now Wei Cheng and Shen Yufei. This pattern perhaps suggests a tendency to prioritize work or abstraction over intimacy and romance. It is notable, then, that both Wang and Shi are married to people outside of their fields (or at least not explicitly in their fields).
Themes
That night, Wei saw Shen praying at a temple on the monastery grounds. When he got closer, he heard her say, “Buddha, please help my Lord break away from the sea of misery.” When Wei asked Shen if this Lord was part of Buddhism, she said no and hurried away. With the help of another monk at the monastery, Wei concluded that if Shen was praying to Buddha to help a mysterious Lord, then this Lord must actually, tangibly exist.
In the time of Copernicus and Pope Gregory, conversations about the solar system were inexplicably linked to religious belief—so it is unsurprising that the same would be true here. But in this passage, readers are forced to grapple with a nearly impossible question: what does it mean to believe in a faith that is in some way visible or tangible?
Themes
Though the monks warned him against it, Wei left with Shen. Soon after, the two were married, though there was never any real passion or love; Shen was only interested in solving the three-body problem. While Shen worked on the Frontiers of Science, Wei was trying to improve his algorithm. For the most part, the two had lived in peace—until yesterday.
Though Wei is working on the three-body problem, he himself is not actively involved in the Frontiers. It can then be inferred that Shen likely married Wei in order to have access to his research, potentially sharing it with the Frontiers for her own ends.
Themes
Wei says that yesterday, a man called him and told him that unless he stopped researching the three-body problem, he would be killed. Then, later that night, Shen had threatened her husband with a gun, telling him that if he stopped working on the problem, she would kill him herself. Shen told him that he would become “the savior of the world” if he successfully solved the three-body problem. But if he stopped, he would be a “sinner.” “If someone were to save or destroy the human race,” she said, “then your possible contribution or sin would be exactly twice as much as his.” Shi, Wang, and Wei are all confused by this strange language.
Like Shen’s comment about the Lord in the Buddhist monastery, her phrasing “twice as much” suggests that she is going off more than faith—there is some real, live entity that she is trying to protect. And, tellingly, for the first time since Ye Wenjie’s youthful anger, the question of saving (or destroying) the human race has resurfaced. What seems like a purely theoretical question in fact has life or death consequences—for someone like Wei, but also potentially for humanity as a whole.
Themes
To continue the investigation on Wei’s behalf, Wang leaves with Shi and Xu Bingbing (the computer specialist). As they drive away, Xu mentions the Three Body game to Wang and explains that she is responsible for monitoring it. When Wang asks for more information, however, Xu explains that she does not understand where the game has come from. Wang is startled by the coincidence, but Xu assures him that they must believe Shi’s famous slogan: “all this must be the work of people.” Wang begins to believe that Xu and Shi are both lying to him.
In addition to Wang’s increasing certainty that the three-body game is part of a larger sea change (one that Shi is likely involved in), this passage is important for its emphasis on “the work of people.” On the one hand, the novel has demonstrated many times that human agency is limited, and that larger, unseen forces are always at play. And on the other hand, Shi’s practical, intuitive, humanist approach to life allows him to find solutions and patterns when others cannot.
Themes
Wang, Xu, and Shi arrive at Shen’s house, but they are too late—she has already been shot and killed. Shi nervously tries to figure out who committed the crime. Wei is not very upset, even when Shi tells him that the murderer probably wanted to kill Wei most of all. Wei admits that there were a few other things he was “too lazy” to tell Shi at first.
Wei’s strange laziness even in the face of his wife’s death once more illustrates the danger of a life so wholly devoted to theory. All Wei cares about are the shapes inside his mind; the people and relationships around him cannot measure up.
Themes
Now, Wei confesses that when Pan Han had arrived at this house, he and Shen had fought. They had spoken of warring sides in a conflict; they mentioned the Adventists and the Redemptionists, and though both groups wanted to bring the Lord to earth, each group had a very different expectation of what would happen when the Lord arrived. Specifically, Pan wanted the Lord to punish humanity, whereas Shen seemed to want no such thing. Wei realizes that the voice that threatened him on the phone probably belonged to Pan.
Shen and Pan are two of the most respected scientists in the world, but the way they are speaking sounds more cultish than scientific. Though much is uncertain, two things seem true to Wang. First, it is likely that Pan was the one who killed Shen. And second, the question of whether humanity deserves to be punished, raised at the beginning of the book, is perhaps now a literal quandary instead of a conceptual one.
Themes
Wei gives Wang a disk with all of his mathematical work on the three-body problem; he encourages Wang to publish the disk under his own name, because he is “a good man, a man with a sense of responsibility.” Wei explains that he is filled with a sense of doom—sunrise now seems like sunset to him. “And,” he tells Wang, “it’s all because God, or the Lord she talked about, can’t even protect Himself anymore.”
Not for the last time, Wang’s essential goodness and sense of duty to others impacts how the other characters treat him. And it is also worth noting the idea of sunrise as doom, especially because the novel is so concerned with the sun’s movements. Most important, however, is the suggestion that this spiritual force, however powerful, is also vulnerable—an idea that flies in the face of conventional theology.
Themes
