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Chapter 18
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
Wang logs in to the game again, but this time, it looks totally different. Instead of the great palace, Wang sees what looks like the grey United Nations (UN) building; instead of stone dehydratories, the dehydratories are now all made of mirrors. Weirdest of all, there is a giant sun in the sky, yet the earth is not burning and no one is panicked. Wang realizes that what appears to be a sun is actually a moon, reflecting the light of one of the real suns. As he approaches the UN building, Wang sees an old man playing violin.
The game has now moved into the modern era, with more recent institutions (like the UN) and more contemporary scientists (like Einstein). But interestingly, the game has shifted in other ways, too, as can be seen in the giant moon and the dehydratories made from mirrors. This shift suggests that players are now being exposed more to the reality of the planet of Trisolaris.
Themes
Wang realizes that the violinist is actually Einstein, and the two men begin to talk. Einstein hints at an event called “the great rip” in which the moon was created, but he cannot elaborate because it is “too painful to recall.” Einstein expresses his belief that his theory of relativity could have perfected earlier attempts to solve the three-body problem, but no one would listen to him—so now he sits here, hopelessly playing Mozart.
Here, the game and Wang’s experience on earth begin to parallel each other even more closely. Just as real-world scientists like Yang Dong are giving up hope that they will be able to find real clarity in theory, the fictionalized Einstein has given up on science altogether, instead turning to the violin for solace. This passage also reflects the lasting effects of trauma. In this case, Einstein’s worst memory is quite literally omnipresent, a haunting moon in the sky.
Themes
Wang tries to enter the UN building, but Einstein tells him that no one is inside. Instead, Wang realizes that everyone is gathered behind the building, looking out at a modernized version of the giant pendulums from King Zhou’s time. Upon his arrival, everyone greets Wang as “Copernicus, the man who crossed five eras.” But when Wang enquires about these more modern pendulums, he is upset to learn that they are actually a “tombstone” for Trisolaris.
Though it is disorienting, Wang must continue to sort out what is invented for the purpose of the game and what is a real feature of Trisolaris; the pendulum monument, he realizes, is in the latter category. But rather than signaling faith in the future, as the pendulums did back in Zhou’s era, the monument now reflects the same hopelessness that Einstein expressed.
Themes
Desperate to restore hope, Wang presents his evolutionary algorithm to the crowd—but they all laugh him off, explaining that many people have arrived at more sophisticated predictions of the suns’ movements. A scientist explains that all these predictions have proved is that the three-body problem has no useful solution, because it is endless chaos. Wang is struck by the sense that “history had made a long circuit and returned to its starting place.”
In this passage, science is dealt its most crushing blow: even Wei’s brilliant, messy, almost life-like theory cannot respond to the chaos that is Trisolaris’s reality. All human ideas of progress, which make sense when the world is stable and predictable, fall to pieces on a planet where light, warmth, and even gravity are unpredictable. In addition to making Wang rethink the basic rules of science, then, this revelation also forces Wang to see history as a “circuit” instead of a line.
Themes
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Wang notes that this civilization has evolved to such an advanced state that it should be able to protect itself against Chaotic Eras; after all, this version of Trisolaris has computers and knowledge of the atomic bomb. But the scientist explains that the moon dashed any hopes of Trisolaran survival. Civilization 191 had seen a frozen flying star early on. Though they did not know it yet, that star would herald a terrifying fact: the suns were about to collide into the planet. And indeed, soon after, the suns tore the planet in two. Though life on the mother planet of Trisolaris did eventually recover, the whole process took 90 million years.
As Wang is quickly figuring out, even the most advanced technology cannot protect against the randomness of the universe. The fact that Trisolaris was ripped in two also recontextualizes the moon Wang had seen at the beginning of the chapter; rather than just being a new detail, the moon is actually the other half of Trisolaris, rendered lifeless by the giant split.
Themes
Worse still, scientists have realized that the Trisolaran stellar system once had 12 planets, 11 of which had been destroyed by the crashing suns. In less than 1,000 years, then, scientists calculated that Trisolaris was doomed to be swallowed by the gaseous layer of a sun. The Trisolarans feel that God has gambled with them, and that in order to survive, they too must “gamble.”
In other words, this section shows that the three suns will continue to split Trisolaris in two until there is nothing left. Faced with such an existential crisis, the Trisolarans abandon scientific methods and logic, instead trying to rely on luck and a more intuitive mode of survival.
Themes
Someone starts the giant pendulum, and Wang is shocked to see that unlike on earth, this pendulum does not move regularly—the gravity of the moon pulls it every which way. Wang wonders if this movement represents “the yearning for order, or the surrender to chaos.” As Wang begins to cry, a pop-up message announces that the goal of the game has changed—“the new goal is: Head for the stars; find a new home.” Wang logs off, but then he logs on again—only to find another message. This message tells him that the situation is urgent, and that the game is about to shut down forever. Even more strangely, the message announces that “Three Body will now go directly to the final scene.”
The world of the game and the real world are now collapsing entirely. And similarly, Wang can no longer tell the difference between a theoretical idea and a practical solution—what is an attempt to bring “order” to the world versus what is an embrace of disorder. Most importantly, though, this final game scene shows that the Trisolarans really are planning to leave their planet and expand outwards; to use the previous metaphor, the Spanish are on their way to the Aztecs.
Themes
