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
No one ever suspected Ye of the murders, and life went on as usual. One day, near the end of Ye’s pregnancy, a group of local children showed up at her door; Ye was surprised to learn that the base had recently lowered its security clearance. The children had heard that Ye was a brilliant scientist, and they wanted her help preparing for the National College Entrance Exam, which had once again been opened to all.
Many of the details in this passage imply that China is slowly exiting the peak of the Cultural Revolution. Education, considered suspect during the 1960s, is opening up again. And rather than the intense secrecy once associated with Red Coast, the base has now become accessible to the public.
Themes
After Ye helped those first children, more and more local kids came to visit Ye and seek her advice. One time, a teacher even came to her door, enthralled by this “bona fide scientist!” From then on, when Ye was overwhelmed by a sense of loneliness, her newfound community would usually surprise her with some homegrown vegetables or a pot of hot dumplings.
Just months earlier, Ye believed that the only way she could ever find company was with alien life. But in this touching scene, she finds herself immersed—for the first time—in real community, dealing not with abstract ideas but with the sweet particulars of daily life.
Themes
At last, it was time for Ye to give birth. There were complications with her pregnancy, so she had to be taken off-base, to the local hospital. While she was in labor, Ye hallucinated hot suns and flying stars. She lost a life-threatening amount of blood in childbirth, but the villagers volunteered over and over to donate their blood to replenish hers.
This passage is a study in contrasts: while Ye’s mind is filled with flying stars, symbolizing her use of science to betray the human race, she is kept alive by the kindness of other human beings. Thus while the novel has frequently shown how people can be self-destructive, it now shows a more generous side of humanity.
Themes
After Ye had the baby—Yang Dong—she was too weak to take care of herself, and she had no relatives who could take her in. Instead, a local man named Hunter Qi brought her into his home, and Ye lived with Qi’s peaceful family for six months. Ye grew especially close to his daughter-in-law Feng, who helped Ye nurse Yang Dong. During this time, Ye found that she had a lot in common with the women in the village, and she was surprised and touched to see how much the men respected her.
Tragically, Ye had lost all of her family by her early twenties, so the fact that Hunter Qi welcomes her as a surrogate daughter is especially meaningful (and likely very healing). It is also worth taking in that this is one of the first times Ye has been around other women (besides her mother and sister). Though it is never explicitly stated, it is possible to infer that getting a break from her largely male world also helps to open up Ye’s perspective.
Themes
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This brief period of happiness felt almost foreign to Ye. Feng had a child around the same time as Ye, and the two women would watch their children play peacefully late into the night. Sometimes, Ye would dream that she herself was a child again, and she would awake with tears in her eyes. When Feng asked questions like, “Why do you think the stars in the sky don’t fall down?” Ye would give simple, soothing answers. In this quiet town in the Greater Khingan Mountains, “something finally thawed in Ye Wenjie’s heart.”
Surprisingly, Ye’s friendship with Feng allows her to prioritize human connection over scientific truth (as can be seen in her almost childlike explanation of the stars). But while this friendship is lovely, it is also deeply ironic: though Yeis finally “thaw[ing]” and beginning to find some compassion for humanity, her betrayal has already been accomplished.
Themes
A few years later, Ye received notice that she and her father had both been politically rehabilitated. To ensure that Yang Dong got a good education, Ye found a job teaching physics at Tsinghua University and returned to Beijing with her daughter. Ye was amazed at the degree to which the Cultural Revolution seemed to be truly over, wondering if this was the end of “the madness.” At the same time, Ye could not forget the message she had sent to the Trisolarans, though at this point it seemed like that communication had been in another lifetime. Indeed, Ye was so shocked at her own betrayal that she forgot about it, distracting herself from her past.
Once more, the novel highlights the gap between individual action and historical change. The very conditions that caused Ye to contact the Trisolarans—namely, the constant violence of the Cultural Revolution—have changed for the better. But Ye cannot undo her actions, nor can she come to terms with them. Ye’s predicament thus reflects the long shadow of trauma; though Ye may not be hurting to the same extent she once was, her own hurtful actions are not at all ameliorated.
Themes
Meanwhile, Ye’s mother, Shao Lin, had recovered and had married a man in the Education Ministry; as the Cultural Revolution ended, this man had risen in prominence, and Shao was now an important woman in her own right. One day, Ye brought Yang Dong to visit her grandmother. Though the visit was nice, Ye felt an “invisible wall” guarding her mother.
Ye Zhetai had always known his wife was opportunistic, and Shao’s prominence both during and after the Cultural Revolution shows just how well she is able to survive and adapt. Though Ye has been able to find some new patience and faith in the Mongolian mountains, her sense of alienation from her mother is as strong as ever.
Themes
Before Ye could leave, Shao’s husband stopped her on the street, warning her not to talk about her father or “pursue historical debts” with her mother. When Ye looked up, she saw Shao’s face in the window, egging this new husband on. Ye picked up Yang Dong and left, never to return.
Rather than a reconciliation, Ye finds herself betrayed yet again by her mother (a relationship that both impacts and reverberates in Ye’s relationship with her own daughter). It is useful to track the novel’s use of the word “historical”: history, the novel demonstrates, can exist on a grand scale, but it can also exist on an intimate one.
Themes
Eventually, Ye even managed to locate the revolutionary girls who had murdered her father. When Ye finally met up with them, the women were still wearing the uniforms they had worn on that fateful day decades earlier. At the same time, they all looked very different—they had become old, battered, and ill. When the women saw Ye, they refused to repent, explaining that despite devoting their lives to the cause they, too, had suffered in the Cultural Revolution. Indeed, only three of the girls had survived; the fourth had lost her life working in a labor camp. This exchange renewed Ye’s resolve. Rather than feeling guilt about her betrayal of humanity, “she finally had her unshakeable ideal: to bring superior civilization from elsewhere in the universe into the human world.”
Earlier, Wang has reflected that “history had made a long circuit and returned to its starting place.” Now, a similar “circuit” happens in Ye’s mind: her moment of trust in humanity is broken by the realization that victimizers can be victims—and vice versa. It is Ye’s understanding that trauma is a universal part of the human experience that cements her desire to bring non-humans to earth. And like the young Red Guards at the beginning of the novel, Ye is now guided only by a passionately-felt, “unshakeable ideal.”
Themes
