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Part 2, Chapter 20
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Silent Patient, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Empathy, Identification, and Boundaries
Tragedy and Destiny
Honesty vs. Deception
Childhood Trauma
Silence vs. “The Talking Cure”
Summary
Analysis
Theo buys a copy of Euripides’s Alcestis and reads it on the Tube ride home. In the play, a man named Admetus is condemned to death, but the gods tell him he will be saved if he can find someone to die in his place. Admetus asks both his parents to die for him, but they refuse—only his wife Alcestis agrees to make this sacrifice.
As Theo dives deeper into Euripides’s tragic play, he realizes that the play is about betrayal: Admetus willingly gives up his wife’s life to save his own, even though Alcestis’s sacrifice proves her incredible strength and generosity.
Themes
At the end of the play, Heracles brings Alcestis back from the dead, reviving her. But when she returns to Admetus, Alcestis refuses to speak anything at all. (“My wife stands here,” Alcestis moans, “but why does she not speak?”) The tragic play ends with Alcestis still mute, and Theo reflects that this story provides a crucial clue to Alicia’s mental state.
Alcestis’s silence is a direct response to her husband’s betrayal—by remaining silent, Alcestis is able to avoid revealing if she is hurt or angry or simply relieved to have returned to Earth. As Theo notes, the link between Alicia and Alcestis (they even have similar-sounding names) perhaps implies that Alicia’s silence, too, is in response to a betrayal.
Themes
