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Part 4, Chapter 16
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
The next morning, Theo plans to “have it out with Alicia.” But when he arrives at the Grove, he learns that she has overdosed on pills; Yuri knows that there is lots of dealing going on in the ward. Theo blames himself, while Christian frets about the rest of the patients’ wellbeing. Strangely, Diomedes is nowhere to be found—even though Yuri had seen him in the hallway earlier that morning.
Diomedes’s absence at this crucial moment (especially when he was seen earlier in the day) casts suspicion on him—could he be the masked man, in some way responsible for Gabriel’s death? After all, he tried to convince Theo that Alicia was imagining the man, which could be a ploy to protect himself. And if the stalker was questioning Alicia like a therapist, isn’t it possible that it was Diomedes all along?
Themes
While the rest of the therapists return to the daily business of the Grove, Theo sits alone with Alicia. As he looks more closely at her, he notices something on the inside of her wrist. Alicia has been injected with a hypodermic needle, meaning this is not a suicide attempt but an attempted murder.
Theo’s realization implies that maybe Alicia’s silence was less about sending a message than it was about self-protection. In other words, maybe she was silencing herself by choice so that no one else could do it through violence.
Themes
