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
Ye wakes up to the sound of roaring; she is on a helicopter, still incredibly sick from her time freezing in the ice water. She is greeted by two men with caps from the PLA (People’s Liberation Army), who ask her about a particular paper she wrote in college. The two men introduce themselves as Lei Zhicheng, who is the Political Commissar at Red Coast Base, and Yang Weining, who is the chief engineer there. Ye is shocked to see Yang—he was one of her father’s students. However, while Ye Zhetai was always eager to focus on theory, Yang preferred to focus on the real world because “it’s easy to make ideological mistakes in theory.” Yang eventually distanced himself from Ye’s father.
The PLA was the armed department of the Chinese communist government, so it is surprising and frightening for Ye to now find herself in the company of two PLA soldiers. The bigger surprise, however, is that Ye must now face her father’s former student. Unlike Ye Zhetai, Yang Weining was able to shape his scientific work to fit political ideology; rather than trying to build a theory around lived experience, Yang understood his goal to be to build a theory centered on communist ideology.
Themes
As she falls back to sleep, Ye hears the two men discussing her. Though they are hesitant to take her on given her checkered political past, there is no other option; whoever takes this job will need to be sequestered at the base, meaning they can have no connections to the outside world. Ye drifts off to Lei and Yang debating some mysterious project.
Though Ye does not fully understand what the two men are discussing, it is clear that her isolation is what makes her such a valuable candidate for this mysterious project. At this moment in her life, Ye is completely alienated from humanity: she has no family, no significant other, and not even any close friends.
Themes
When she finally gets off the helicopter, Ye realizes where she is: on top of Radar Peak. Lei explains to her that despite the severity of her crime, she has been given “the opportunity to redeem herself through hard work.” But after Lei leaves, Yang cautions Ye that once she joins the research at Radar Peak, she can never leave it. Without hesitating, Ye accepts; Radar Peak gives her an opportunity to be separated from the rest of the world.
For most people, the reclusive nature of Radar Peak would be daunting, but Ye sees this isolation as an opportunity. After all, for someone so disgusted with humanity, what could be better than a chance get away from it?
Themes
Yang starts to take Ye on a tour of the building, but she wants to wait outside, staring at the giant antenna. Suddenly, the whir of the various machines on the base gets quiet, and the antenna begins to transmit an electric signal. Ye feels her face itch, and the sky takes on a dim glow. A flock of birds, mid-flight, drops down dead. Ye tries to understand what the antenna is pointing at, but she cannot.
The antenna again proves itself to be capable of quite ominous destruction: whatever force it is transmitting kills birds instantly. Most tellingly, however, the fact that the antenna is pointed at an indeterminate point suggests once more that the point of Radar Peak is to contact some very distant, unknown source.
Themes
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