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Chapter 5
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
The next day, Wang takes his camera into the city to shoot some landscapes. Normally, he prefers to capture peaceful scenes, but today he feels too chaotic to do that. As he snaps photos, he reflects on the theory of the shooter and the farmer. In this theory, a skilled hunter shoots bullets into a paper target, spacing each shot out by 10 centimeters. If there were small sentient beings living on the target, they might incorrectly assume that there was a hole in the universe every 10 centimeters.
The metaphor of the shooter and the farmer is all about perception. The shooter part of the theory suggests that people will try to form assumptions based on their own immediate experiences—but that those experiences can sometimes be misleading. As a landscape photographer, Wang is acutely aware that every human image or perception tells only a partial story; there is always something just out of frame.
Themes
On the other hand, “the farmer” part of the theory imagines a farm in which “food arrives” at 11 every day. On Thanksgiving Day, the farmer explains this theory to his turkeys, but rather than getting food at 11, the turkeys are slaughtered as food for the humans; the turkeys had been expecting to be served without realizing that they themselves were the food. Wang begins to doubt his own perceptions.
The farmer part of this story then demonstrates how people always center themselves in their own narratives. Both the turkeys and the farmer believe that they will eat at 11, but the turkeys do not realize that to the farmer, they are the meal. The turkeys’ self-involvement ultimately marks their downfall: though they think they are the heroes of the story, they are actually the victims.
Themes
Wang comes home and develops his film, only to discover what appears to be a countdown in the center of the negatives. No matter what the picture looks like, the countdown appears (so if the background is black, the countdown is white, and vice versa). A panicked Wang realizes that the countdown is giving him 1,200 hours, or about 50 days—for what, he does not know.
Wang’s peaceful hobby has now become a source of great anxiety—though Wang has taken the pictures, he no longer has any control over them. Plus, the seeming irrationality of the numbers flies in the face of Wang’s normally rational, methodical way of thinking.
Themes
When his wife and son return home, Wang asks them to take pictures with his film camera (though he does not want his wife to take pictures of his son Dou , lest the awful countdown appear on the child’s face). To his relief, no numbers develop on the pictures taken by his family members.
Unlike Yang Dong, Wang always puts his family first. He protects his son even in a moment of intellectual crisis, displaying his tenderness and sense of duty to others.
Themes
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In an attempt to diagnose the problem, Wang takes apart his camera and adds a new roll of film; still, the numbers appear whenever he takes a picture. Wang then borrows a different kind of camera from his neighbor, but it doesn’t help—the numbers still appear on every photograph he takes (though they do not appear on the pictures his family members take). Wang realizes this is not a problem that can be solved with a reasoned, technical approach. As his wife breaks down into sobs at her husband’s turmoil, Wang decides to call Shen Yufei.
In this passage, Wang effectively conducts a series of experiments on his camera to figure out the issue. But this scientific approach leads nowhere, forcing Wang to contend with the idea that the countdown is more supernatural than natural. And interestingly, the fact that the camera is the source of Wang’s stress adds to the novel’s more general anxiety that technology has a dark side.
Themes
Wang arrives at Shen’s house, which is lovely and expensive, though Wang does not understand where she makes her money. He is greeted by Shen’s husband, a seemingly spaced-out man named Wei Cheng. Though Wei has nothing to do with the Frontiers of Science—nobody even knows if he is employed—he spends all day laboring on a fancy computer. Wei takes Wang to Shen’s room.
Shen Yufei is clearly high up in the Frontiers of Science, so Wang hopes she will be able to provide him answers. But instead, her house just generates more questions: why can she afford such a beautiful home on a researcher’s salary? And why is she married to this secluded, bizarre man?
Themes
When Wang enters, he sees that Shen is wearing a V-suit, which is a kind of virtual reality suit that allows players to feel physical sensations when they play video games. Shen is playing a game on the website www.3body.net, which is surprising, given that she does not seem to be the gaming type. Once Shen logs off, Wang explains his situation to her. She seems completely unfazed by what he has told her; instead, she simply tells him to abandon his work on nanomaterials.
Shen is a very serious woman, so it seems incongruent that she would be playing a game; it is this cognitive dissonance that leads Wang to remember the name of the game. Even more shocking, however, is Shen’s seeming understanding of what Wang is going through—in addition to being a leader in the Frontiers, Shen has some greater knowledge of the universe that Wang does not.
Themes
As Wang moves to leave, he notices another car pull up, and a man named Pan Han gets out of the car. Pan is a famous environmentalist; he has risen to prominence because of his accurate predictions about various biological problems created through new methods of farming. For much of his career, Pan argued that “technological progress was a disease in human society.” Wang sees Shen and Pan speak, but Shen does not let Pan into her house.
Ye Wenjie and Bai Mulin were consumed with anxiety about the environment in the 1960s, but humans’ destruction of their planet has only gotten worse since then. Pan Han’s understanding that progress can actually be a “disease” is thus shared by many of the novel’s characters. Also worth noting is that while both Shen and Pan are respected scientists, they appear to be on poor terms with each other.
Themes
On his way home, Wang runs into Shi, causing him to believe Shi is following him. Exhausted by his strange day, Wang falls asleep as soon as he gets back to his house. He dreams of the countdown all night—only to find, when he wakes up in the morning, that the horrifying numbers are now a constant part of his field of vision. Wang decides to take the day off from work to meet with an ophthalmologist. The doctor is amused by Wang’s paranoia, and he thinks that Wang is probably just overtired; as a cure, he prescribes taking more time off from work.
In a horrifying twist, the countdown has moved from external objects (photographs) into Wang’s own body, as the numbers now appear in his eyes. Still, Wang refuses to believe that this is a problem outside of the domain of normal science; instead, he consults an eye doctor, hoping to find solace in someone else’s professional, scientific expertise.
Themes
Wang decides to go to his lab, where they are working on developing a new, extra strong nanomaterial. Unfortunately, the machine they are using to create this new material has been malfunctioning, and Wang’s team has been begging him to take a break for weeks. Though Wang has previously refused, he now tells his lab director to shut down the machine for a couple of days. Wang tries to reassure himself that his change of heart has nothing to do with the ominous countdown (“I’m not giving in”). However, as soon as he tells the lab director to stop the machine, the numbers disappear.
Wang does not want to admit how much these strange numbers have affected him, yet he is desperate to get rid of them—so desperate that he indeed follows Shen Yufei’s advice and shuts down his lab. The reality that the countdown actually stops when he does this suggests something supernatural (or at least superhuman) is at work.
Themes
Angrily, Wang calls Shen Yufei to demand answers, and Shen implies that some form of higher power is involved. Rather than buying into Shen’s explanation, Wang demands to see the countdown at a larger scale because “the shooter and the farmer should be able to manipulate matters at a scale that humans cannot.” Shen gives Wang a chart of Morse code and tells him to find a place where he can measure the cosmic microwave background—and to check that measurement three days from now between one and five in the morning. In that time, Shen promises, “the entire universe will flicker” for Wang.
Again, the story of the shooter and the farmer reminds Wang that his own perceptions are limited—and that this limited perception makes him vulnerable. In order to help him trust that the countdown is real, therefore, Wang demands to see it at a much larger scale. That Shen Yufei can make the entire universe “flicker” then hints that she herself can control the universe—or that she knows someone who can.
Themes
