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Part 2, Chapter 5
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 gets home and turns on the light. It takes him a second to adjust to the new furniture: “new colors, reds and yellows where once there had been black and white.” Kathy is not home, which is evident because the apartment is so quiet (Kathy is always watching TV or talking on the phone or running lines). Theo surmises that she is probably at rehearsal for a production of Othello; the show has been time-consuming, and recently she’s been coming home later and later.
While Alicia is the titular “silent patient,” Kathy is a swirl of volume. In addition to Kathy’s strange absence, the fact that she is performing Othello—Shakespeare’s famous drama about betrayal—suggests that some sort of deception might be at play.
Themes
Theo uses Kathy’s absence to smoke marijuana, a habit he first developed in college. Ruth had never discouraged this habit, noting that it was a kind of containment for Theo. Containment is what a mother does for a baby: while the baby cries and panics, unsure of the new world they have entered, the mother holds them and shows them how to be calm. If marijuana made Theo feel that same sense of safety, Ruth felt he should continue smoking it until he no longer needed to.
Whereas Theo mostly dwells on the ways parents can harm their children, “containment” is a means by which parents can set their babies up for success and self-regulation. In the absence of such parental help, Ruth encourages Theo to find alternative methods of “containing” himself—even if those methods involve a drug like marijuana.
Themes
At first, when Theo met Kathy, his love for her replaced the drug. But at a party for one of Kathy’s friends, Theo had been offered (and accepted) a joint. Though he never confessed it to Kathy, Theo began smoking regularly again, especially after she took a week-long trip to New York City.
Symbolically, Theo’s smoking of joints links to his smoking of cigarettes; both are habits that he tries to conceal, and both hint that Theo is less honest than he seems. Also, Theo’s return to the drug might suggest that his marriage with Kathy is not as happy or satisfying (on his end, at least) as it once was.
Themes
Alone in his apartment, Theo rolls a joint and smokes it quickly. He gets very high, and while reaching for the TV remote, he accidentally knocks over Kathy’s laptop. There, on the screen, Theo sees a series of emails between Kathy and someone with the screen name BADBOY22. The emails reveal that Kathy has been having an affair. Some of the emails are intensely sexual, whereas others are more emotional. Theo reads until he feels sober—and then he runs to the bathroom to throw up.
Kathy has been cheating on Theo—and while that shocks Theo, it is also consistent with the brief characterization readers have received (as in, she met Theo while cheating on her previous boyfriend). Interestingly, the psychological impact of Kathy’s email has physiological effects, as Theo has to literally run to vomit.
Themes
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