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
Against all odds, the aging Ye Wenjie makes her way to the top of Radar Peak. Once she arrives at the summit, she looks around for ruins— but only a patch of grass remains, as if Red Coast Base never existed. Still, by looking closely, Ye is able to see the metal base of the parabolic antenna that once dominated the peak. Near the base, Ye sees a plaque: “Site of Red Coast Base (1968 –1987).” She reflects that the tiny tablet doesn’t seem “so much a memorial as an attempt to forget.”
Though Ye has changed the world forever, her actual invention—her communication with the Trisolarans, as embodied by the parabolic antenna—has been all but forgotten. In other words, even though Ye will leave a gigantic historical legacy, her real experience will be lost to history. The novel thus seems to imply that the only way to leave a memory of one’s life as it really was is to have meaningful connections with other people.
Themes
Ye walks to the edge of the cliff, remembering when she killed her husband—Yang Weining—and Commissar Lei in this very spot. As she stares out at the surrounding countryside, the sun begins to set. Ye, preparing herself to die, whispers her final words, thinking about her personal “sunset” and the “sunset for humanity.”
In this ambiguous, lovely last moment, Ye seems (perhaps for the first time) to feel guilt for her actions; for the first time, she is recognizing that in addition to being wounded herself, she has also done great damage to others. And more than that, this closing passage shows once more how an individual’s experience—and individual pain—can ripple outwards. Ye’s “sunset” (as she prepares to kill herself) is inextricable from “sunset for humanity;” despite—or perhaps because of—her isolation, her own loss has meant a loss for the entire world.
Themes
