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
For the meet-up, Wang arrives at small coffee shop. He is surprised to see that there are only six other people there, and that they are a variety of ages. Wang recognizes two of the others: one man is an expert in combining Eastern philosophy with modern science, and the one woman in the room is a famous avant-garde novelist. Wang learns that one of the other men is a vice president at a giant software company; another is a high-level executive at the State Power Corporation; another is a reporter; and the last one is a scientist. The players are all quiet, preoccupied with the strangeness of Three Body.
All of the people at the meet-up are experts in their fields, and all of them work in jobs that require large-scale, critical thinking. Three Body is designed in part to weed players out (by refusing to let them reenter the game if they guess wrong); now, Wang sees that most of the players who achieve his level are members of the most elite classes.
Themes
The organizer of the meet-up arrives, and Wang is shocked to see that it is Pan Han. Surreptitiously, Wang texts Shi, who tells him to “play the fanatic” in the meeting. As Pan opens the floor, each of the players talks about how obsessed they have become with the game as a whole. One player has made it to Civilization 203, which makes Wang realize that the game progresses differently for each individual player.
Wang was first introduced to the Three-Body game through Shen Yufei, but now the game seems to be helmed by Pan Han—who is likely responsible for Shen’s death. From this strange collection of facts, it can be inferred that Pan and Shen were at one point working together, even if now they are opponents.
Themes
Finally, one of the gamers asks the question on all of their minds: is the game a game or a reality? Pan explains that the world depicted in the game, known as Trisolaris, really does exist. Though the Trisolarans do not really look like humans, they are capable of dehydrating and rehydrating themselves. And the Trisolarans really did form a human computer, though their bodies allow them to communicate much more quickly than humans’ bodies ever could.
Wang has long suspected that the complexity of the game is too lifelike to be totally made up. And indeed, this passage reveals that the game planet is in fact a real planet. Rather than an invention, the Three-Body game is merely a way for human beings to understand a planet they have never been to. At the same time, not everything about the game is completely accurate. For example, the characters in the game appear as humans, when in reality Trisolarans are a different life form entirely.
Themes
Though one player muses about how expensive the game must have been to create, Pan does not indulge this line of thinking; instead, he merely comments that the goal of the game is “very simple and pure: to gather those of us who have common ideals.” Pan then asks everyone assembled at the meet-up how they would feel if Trisolarans were to enter earth.
If at first players were weeded out by their critical thinking skills, now Pan is eliminating players based on their personal beliefs. This test of ideology is not dissimilar from some of the interrogations that happen at the beginning of the book, during the height of the Cultural Revolution.
Themes
Get the entire The Three-Body Problem LitChart as a printable PDF.
The avant-garde author and the reporter both immediately celebrate such an idea—they both believe that “human society is incapable of improvement,” so it is necessary for some external force to intervene. The philosopher and scientist join in, comparing the situation to the Spanish conquering of the Aztecs; though that conquest was bloody, the philosopher argues that a world governed by the Aztecs would have been even more violent. The software company executive and the power company executive are horrified, pointing out that the Spanish conquistadors completely destroyed Aztec society. 11001
In this critical moment, Ye Wenjie’s original fear—that humanity is incapable of a “moral awakening” on its own terms—resurfaces. The comparison to the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs is particularly loaded: who gets to make decisions about what cultures are morally wrong versus which ones are morally upstanding? Does the violence of the Aztecs (or, in this comparison, of human beings) justify the greater violence of Spanish (or alien) invaders? And can conquest ever lead to cohabitation, or is it always destined to end in destruction?
Themes
At last, Pan asks Wang to weigh in. Wang says he agrees with the author, the scientist, the reporter and the philosopher. Pan then dismisses the executives and turns to the other five people who remain—“We are comrades now,” he declares.11001
In addition to the fact that Wang is now a member of this mysterious society, it is worth noting that it is the creative types—instead of the businessmen—who choose to join Pan. Also, the use of the word “comrades” once more links this moment to the fervor of the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s.
Themes
