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
About 300 people gather at the next Three Body meet-up, which is hosted in an abandoned chemical plant. Wang sees that in the center of the room, three metal spheres moving around each other at random serve to recreate the problem at hand. But most of the attendees are focused on Pan Han, who climbs on top of a table. When someone asks Pan if he murdered Shen Yufei, he replies without hesitation that he did, calling her a traitor.
At last, Wang is beginning to put together the pieces of this secret society (which he now knows to be the Earth-Trisolaris Organization, or ETO). Shen and Pan were both members of the society, but they were from opposite factions—and since they hated each other enough to kill, it is clear that these factions are violently at odds.
Themes
A fight breaks out, as many of the attendees accuse Pan of using the Environmental Branch of the society for his own personal gain. Though Pan was supposed to create environmental disasters to make humanity loathe itself, mostly he just got famous through his predictions. A chorus of voices break out, calling for different next steps and again using those words “Adventist” and “Redemptionist.” Just as Pan is about to call for Three Body believers to incite a global rebellion, revealing themselves to the world, the commander of the Earth-Trisolaris Organization (ETO) walks in. Wang is shocked to realize that the commander is none other than Ye Wenjie.
Now, some of the strange occurrences that Shi Qiang worked to make sense come together—namely, the slew of environmental disasters was in fact part of a larger plot to make humans more sympathetic to alien invasion. At the same time, though, Pan’s desire to leave an individual legacy has interfered with his ability to successfully carry out this plan. But more important than any of that is the fact that Ye Wenjie is in charge. And though that may be surprising behavior from such a sweet old woman, it also makes perfect sense—after all, it was she who first believed that humanity must be saved or stopped by an outside force.
Themes
Ye begins with the traditional call-and-response: she cries out “eliminate human tyranny,” and the crowd responds, “the world belongs to Trisolaris!” Then, Ye begins to interrogate Pan, telling him he has broken the organization’s key code of conduct by killing Shen. Pan defends himself by saying that if Wei had discovered a solution to the Three Body Problem, the Trisolarans would never come to Earth.
Clearly, this organization hopes to bring the aliens to earth. But now it seems that one faction (of which Pan is a member) wants the Trisolarans to abandon their planet entirely, while one faction (led by Shen) wants to solve the three-body problem, thus allowing the Trisolarans to remain at least partially in their home.
Themes
But Ye is not satisfied. Instead, she has Pan repeat the organization’s plan of action, which states that humans can no longer solve their own problems or maintain control of their own inventions. Therefore, they call on outside actors—the Trisolarans—to come to earth and redeem society. Pan wants Ye to declare herself an Adventist, but Ye does not believe that the Adventist faction shares the organization’s overall mission.
Pan’s cohort are known as the Adventists, which means that Shen’s group must be the Redemptionists. Yet Ye, even though she is the leader of the ETO as a whole, does not subscribe to either group. Also worth noting: the group’s mission directly articulates the idea that humans cannot manage their own technological progress, one of the novel’s major themes.
Themes
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An Israeli man makes his way to the front of the crowd. The man recalls how he lost a child and donated his kidney to a Palestinian girl in the hopes of pacifying the conflict between the two peoples. But when the conflict did not stop, the man became so convinced of humanity’s evil that he grew determined to destroy it entirely. This total destruction, he reveals, is the true mission of the Adventists.
Like Ye, this Israeli man has seen just how much harm ideological divides can cause—and like Ye, his trauma causes him to loathe people. But whereas Ye originally hoped to awaken humanity to its own evil, this man—like Pan and the rest of the Adventists—simply hopes the Trisolarans will wipe humans out altogether.
Themes
Ye explains that the Adventist faction was started by a man named Mike Evans; she does not agree with Adventist theory. Worse still, the Adventists have created a Second Red Coast Base, where they can receive messages from the Trisolarans. Rather than sharing those messages with the entire ETO, however, the Adventists have kept that communication hidden; they have also communicated back to the Trisolarans in secret.
There have been many giant ideological rifts throughout the novel: between powers in the Cold War, between different Red Guard groups in the Cultural Revolution, and now between the Adventists and Redemptionists. And as with all of these divides, the split within the ETO has made secrecy the norm, as the Adventists now refuse to share their information with their more hopeful colleagues.
Themes
As Pan begins to panic, Ye calmly berates him for killing Shen Yufei simply because she was a Redemptionist. Before Pan can run, one of Ye’s henchwomen snaps his neck; his body spasms and he dies. Ye announces that she trusts the rest of the people in the room are Redemptionists.
Though Ye herself tries to distance herself from each faction, her quick murder of Pan shows that, ultimately, she is more aligned with the Redemptionists than she is with the Adventists.
Themes
When Ye notices Wang Miao, she introduces him to the group. She also explains that the Lord’s first priority is to eliminate nanomaterials, the very technology Wang works on. As Wang looks around in shock, Ye begins to tell him the rest of the story of Red Coast Base.
Now, Wang understands why Shen encouraged him to stop his work—the countdown was a Trisolaran trick meant to make him cease his progress on what the aliens undoubtedly view as a threatening technology. Moreover, it now becomes obvious that the real “Lord” Shen used to refer to was actually the Trisolarans.
Themes
