The Silent Patient

Theo’s discovery of Kathy’s infidelity and his reaction dominates these chapters. Kathy is no longer the “Greek goddess come to life” (55) that she was on their first night together. Theo idolized Kathy, much like Alicia idolized Gabriel, but this illusion shatters:

Kathy hadn’t saved me—she wasn’t capable of saving anyone. She was no heroine to be admired—just a frightened, fucked-up girl, a cheating liar. This whole mythology of us that I had built up…now collapsed in a matter of seconds—like a house of cards in a gust of wind (103).

The simile attests to the fragility of a love built on idolization, built on seeing someone as their “perfect” self and not their true, fallible self.

The allusion to Othello is one of many theatric references throughout the novel. In Othello, Othello strangles his wife Desdemona to death, believing her to be an adulteress. After realizing Desdemona's innocence, Othello stabs another man, Iago, to death, blaming him for the error, and then kills himself. This allusion thus foreshadows the violence to come.

Such theatric references, often to tragic plays, speak to the central theme running throughout the novel—the human tendency to present a certain face to the world, often a false façade. Theo himself is keen to “keep up appearances,” exemplified in his desire to hide the fact that he smokes cigarettes from his colleagues, due to the commonly held belief among psychiatrists that smoking points to unresolved mental health issues. Even to Kathy, his intimate partner, Theo feels the need to present a façade, hiding his marijuana use from her because he knows she would disapprove. Even after discovering Kathy’s infidelity, he can’t let her go (despite Ruth’s advice to leave) and clings to some façade of their old love: “She was the love of my life—she was my life—and I wasn’t ready to give her up. Not yet. Even though she had betrayed me, I still loved her. Perhaps I was crazy, after all” (105).

Theo’s mental health worsens in the face of Kathy’s betrayal. He smokes more and reaches out to his old therapist, Ruth, when his negative self-talk spirals—as it did before his suicide attempt in university. Of marijuana, Theo says, “It cradled me and held me safe like a well-loved child. In other words, it contained me” (92). He elaborates on “containment” as described by psychoanalyst W.R. Bion, which refers to a mother’s ability to soothe a baby. If a baby doesn’t experience containment through the mother, then it grows into an adult plagued by anxiety, unable to contain him/herself. Theo implies that he lacked containment as a baby. Theo’s issues with his mother are symbolic in the way he views older women—namely Ruth and Indira—as maternal, pinpointing their motherly traits.