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
Though Wang logs off, he cannot stop thinking about the Chaotic Era. He reflects on a day in school, when he learned about information theory. To illustrate the concept, his professor showed the class two images: a painting called Along the River During the Qingming Festival—which was filled with many details—and a photograph of a wispy cloud in the sky. Surprisingly, the photograph contained more information because “its entropy […] exceeded the painting’s by one or two orders of magnitude.” Wang reflects that the Three Body game is the same way; though it seems simple, the game is actually quite complex.
Entropy is a lack of order or predictability, so whereas a painting will always be composed and planned by a human being, even the simplest real-life image—like the wispy cloud—has more entropy (because it is not man-made or planned). When Wang reflects that the Three Body game feels similarly unpredictable, he is also intuiting that the video game is in some way real, as messy and complicated as life is. Furthermore, this comparison places a celebrated 11th-century painting against a brand-new video game—and shows how the more recent invention is by far the more complex one. Even in the world of art and entertainment, technology has progressed dramatically.
Themes
Wang arrives at Yang Dong’s mother’s apartment complex, per his conversation with Ding Yi. He sees an old woman struggling with her groceries and guesses correctly that this is Yang’s mother. Upon offering to help her, Wang learns that Yang’s mother is in fact the scientist Ye Wenjie. Ye brings Wang up the stairs into her apartment, and he sees that she is watching several neighbors’ young children. Wang observes that Ye is a natural grandmother, and he wonders if she was sad that Yang Dong never had children.
This older Ye Wenjie is very different from the one introduced earlier in the book. Whereas young Ye was distrustful and isolated, this old woman is warm and a natural caretaker. Though the elderly Ye longs for connection, Wang reflects that the last stage of her life has been defined by loss—and readers know that, in fact, every stage of Ye Wenjie’s life has been tragic and traumatic.
Themes
Ye shows Wang to Yang’s room (though Ye calls her daughter by the pet name Dong Dong). Wang is surprised to find that the room, which Yang Dong lived in even as an adult, is almost entirely bare—the only furniture is made of tree stumps. On Yang’s desk, there is a picture of her as a little girl; she is standing with her mother on a mountain with a giant antenna in the background, and Wang notices that Yang looks terrified in the picture.
Again, the sparse room signals that Yang’s focus on her work left no room for other pursuits or personality traits. Two things in particular stand out here: the tree stumps and the picture with the antenna. The tree stumps link Yang Dong to the mass deforestation that her mother witnessed as a teenager; the antenna makes it clear that Yang spent her childhood at the fearsome Radar Peak.
Themes
Just as Wang sees a birchbark notebook on Yang’s desk, Ye walks into the room. She shows Wang what is in the notebook: some strange, abstract drawings Yang Dong made as a child. Ye expresses regret that she introduced her daughter to such abstract scientific concepts at a young age. “Her world was too simple,” Ye reflects, “and all she had were ethereal theories. When they collapsed, she had nothing to lean on to keep on living.” Though Wang reminds Ye that many scientists are dying by suicide, Ye believes that Yang should have been extra flexible and resilient because she was a woman.
The theme of theory versus lived experience once more comes into focus here: theory is “simple” and satisfying, but it is also “ethereal” and impossible to depend on. Instead, an appreciation of contradiction is necessary to enjoy life and “keep on living.” Ye Wenjie’s thoughts on gender are also important to take in. Both Ye and Yang were women in a primarily male world, and Ye’s model of flexibility is a far cry from the competition and mockery Wang experienced in the largely male Battle Command Center.
Themes
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Before he leaves, Wang asks Ye where he can observe the cosmic background radiation (as Shen Yufei instructed him to do). Ye recommends a place in the suburbs of Beijing, and she tells Wang she will put him in touch with a former student who works there. Before Wang leaves, Ye observes that he looks tired, and she gives him some ginseng to feel better. Wang, deeply touched by this gesture, promises to visit Ye again.
Ye’s sweetness to Yang further distances her from the young version of herself introduced earlier in the text. At the same time, it is possible that Ye understands something about why Wang is tired—and that, as one of the world’s foremost astrophysicists, she knows more than she is letting on.
Themes
