The Three-Body Problem

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2006

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-3

Part 2, Chapters 4-11

Part 2, Chapters 12-20

Part 3, Chapters 21-27

Part 3, Chapters 28-35

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Book Club Questions

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Three Body

The Three Body game is a video game developed by the ETO in association with the Trisolarans. Wang enters the game, eventually learning that the premise of the game represents the plight of the Trisolarans. Characters in the game must solve the eponymous three-body problem, and their growing understanding of the problem allows them to progress to the next level. The association between understanding this problem and linear progression in the game symbolizes the complexity of the issue at hand. Only by understanding the three-body problem and empathizing with the plight of the people involved can a person advance in any meaningful sense. The number of civilizations that rise and fall during the course of the game symbolizes the complexity of the titular three-body problem. To Wang, the civilizations are tied to relics of human history. The mishmash of the past cultures seems absurd to him at first but eventually allows him to comprehend just how many cultures have risen up over the course of millions of years, only to be destroyed by a certain alignment of stars that they couldn’t predict. To the early civilizations, the waves of destruction are essentially supernatural. They try to hypnotize whatever higher power is inflicting these destructive moments on them. Then, as science develops, they begin to comprehend their issue. When they realize that the three-body problem may be unsolvable, their system of beliefs becomes almost supernatural again. The characters in the Three Body game and the patterns of creation and destruction provide Wang with a shorthand visual representation of the chaos and strife that the Trisolarans endure.

In addition, the existence of the Three Body game symbolizes the advanced nature of the Trisolaran society. The collaboration between the Trisolarans, their sophons, and the members of the ETO allows for a complicated game like Three Body to be developed and distributed at great cost. The game targets the elite of human society, providing them with an unsolvable puzzle which both creates empathy among the human elite and recruits new members to the ETO. A seemingly simple video game is invested with an unknowable level of complexity, reflecting the technological advancement of the Trisolarans in comparison to the humans. To the humans, Three Body is a game. To the Trisolarans and their allies, Three Body is part of a complex military campaign. The difference in understanding with regard to Three Body illustrates the extent of humanity’s lack of readiness to engage in a war with the alien race. The level of complexity, even in terms of a video game, differs so vastly that the humans are at an immediate disadvantage.

Three Body is unwinnable, just as the three-body problem is supposedly unsolvable. The game is created to be unsolvable, which is in itself symbolic of the mood the Trisolarans are trying to instill in humanity. The aliens want to create in the humans a sense of empathy and hopelessness. Through the unwinnable game, the Trisolarans force the humans to reckon with the Trisolarans’ desperate situation. Then, they demonstrate their technological advances. Then, they make the humans realize that the arrival of the Trisolarans is a similarly unwinnable game. The natural end state of the game is to accept that some battles can’t be won. By forcing the human elite to accept the unwinnable nature of the universe as a natural phenomenon, the Trisolarans use the game as a metaphor for their inevitable dominance.

Antenna

When Ye Wenjie first sees Radar Peak, the large antenna seems particularly alien and strange. The antenna itself is incongruous, out of place with the natural surroundings. The heavy metal structure, clearly visible on the mountaintop, has a destructive quality that results in the deaths of entire flocks of birds when the antenna is in use. For the young Ye, recently traumatized by the events of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the antenna is a horrifying reminder of the terror of modernity. The monstrous antenna dominates the old, natural world and brings pain and suffering to the environment. She doesn’t understand the antenna’s use or the purpose at first but can’t look away. She’s morbidly fascinated by the machine’s existence as well as what it represents. In this way, Ye innately understands the potential of the antenna as a symbol, a dividing line between the past and the future, the familiar and the alien, the safe and the dangerous.

Ye is permitted to enter the Red Coast Base only when she has been accused of a serious crime. After being framed for a crime, she’s allowed to work on the base as redeem herself. As such, the process by which she learns of the base’s true purpose and the mechanical reality of the antenna ties closely to her search for atonement. Ye is disillusioned with the world. As she struggles to understand the changing shape of Chinese society, she begins to understand the antenna’s uses and potential. It represents a search for a meaning beyond the world. Whether listening for scraps of communication from enemy satellites or listening for a voice from an alien world, the antenna represents a desire to communicate with something beyond the immediate. Ye’s work on the antenna is one of the happiest times in her life but also one of the loneliest. Through the antenna, she listens intently for some sign of life but—at first—she hears nothing. The moment of important symbolic change comes when Ye stops listening and starts talking. Rather than using the antenna to passively listen for external voices, she uses it to actively broadcast her voice throughout the universe. This itself is a symbolic act, and Lei warns her about the innate political symbolism of pointing the antenna at the red sun. Ye does so anyway, illustrating her desire to break free from the petty chains of human politics and communicate with some external force that can judge humanity as she believes it needs to be judged. Ye’s relationship with the antenna changes, symbolizing her desire to invoke judgment on her species rather than simply passively waiting for that judgment to arrive.

Ye’s broadcast is a symbol of humanity’s destruction. The antenna, which once represented cutting-edge science and an optimistic hope that humanity might find friends among the stars, comes to symbolize the means through which humanity potentially destroys itself. A woman completely disillusioned with humanity is willing to betray her species to a race of desperate aliens, who assure her that they’ll invade and conquer her world. The antenna is no longer a tool of science but a weapon. This weapon was developed by humanity, which then turned the weapon on itself. The weaponization of the antenna is possible only because of the alienation that Ye feels. After such a traumatic life, the antenna is a weapon she can use to symbolically express her hatred of the human race. She fires the message at the Trisolarans as if she were firing a gun at herself. Thus, the use of the antenna foreshadows her death by suicide at the novel’s end. Ye’s alienation makes possible the destruction of humanity by the Trisolarans, which her use of the antenna as a weapon then symbolizes.

Forests

When Ye leaves Beijing, she’s sent to a mountainous region of China to work with a logging crew. The forest she finds in the region is in the process of destruction but is still beautiful. During this time, the girl from the city develops a deep love for the natural world which is elucidated by her relationship with the forest. Unlike the urban areas of her childhood and her trauma, the forest is a peaceful place. To Ye, the forest represents a previous iteration of humanity that’s a far cry from the traumatizing, violent present of the Cultural Revolution. Ye’s desire to be surrounded by the forest’s natural beauty symbolizes her yearning for a past she has never known. She grew up in tumultuous circumstances, so the peace and quiet of the forest are completely novel to her. The forest’s quietude is practically an alien world—one she’d like to visit and inhabit. In all its natural beauty, the forest symbolizes an unattainable past for the traumatized Ye.

The beauty of the forest doesn’t last long, however. Ye and her fellow students are assigned the task of cutting down the trees to make space for military bases and other infrastructure projects. This process of deforestation is loud and mechanical, and it’s used to fuel the modernization of the rest of China. Ye is a physics student, and many of the people around her are specialized students who were swept up in the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. With that chaos reaching fever pitch, the assignment of students to tasks such as logging suggests that the government has no real idea what to do with the people it has produced. The logging work is hard and destructive, providing busy work in an out-of-the-way place that allows the government to roll back the chaos that it unleashed during the Cultural Revolution. The most fervent believers are now mechanized, turned into machines to power industrialization, which is more useful to Chinese society than ideological fervor. The deforestation by the students is not only an eradication of the old world that Ye loves but also an indication that the government is struggling to control the chaos it unleashed. This, like Ye struggling to control her followers in the ETO, recurs throughout the novel.

In addition, the deforestation sows the symbolic seeds of humanity’s destruction. The clearing away of the old, natural beauty radicalizes Ye and Evans. They’re horrified by the deforestation which turns bountiful natural spaces into arid wastelands. The erasure of the forest is a symbolic indicator of the erasure of hope. Ye becomes so pessimistic about the future of humanity that she needs an external force to judge and punish humanity. Evans tries to replant the forest, but the villagers refuse to wait for his trees to grow because there’s too much potential for profit. Human nature, Evans and Ye decide, is incompatible with the natural world. Deforestation becomes a symbol and a justification for their actions, an illustration of why humanity can’t be trusted to take care of itself. The absence of the forest functions as a symbolic validation of Ye’s most radical ideas.