Some a little more than others.
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"We're all mad" seems to sum up the entire play, for me. The Physicists dances around an idea of sanity, yes, but I also believe it hits on matters of perception. Einstein, Newton, and Mobius purposefully deceive everyone else into questioning their sanity. The matter of "but are they really (in)sane?" seems to be an aspect of the play, but for me it wasn't the main point. The point was, no one was right in the head, everyone was messed up to some degree (at least in the case of the physicists and Von Zahnd), the only thing that mattered was where they stood on the battle field -- what vantage point they were given.
With this idea of perspectives playing in my head, I can't help but think back to Bergson's article about laughter. With society being a corrective force towards an inelastic individual, where does that put The Physicists? Mobius played the part of an inelastic individual (by pretending to be an outlier in society -- an insane person), but was in truth an extremely elastic individual (by preemptively protecting his scientific discoveries from the world in a manner that would bode no question to possible ulterior motives). Von Zahnd, on the other hand, was outwardly elastic but inwardly an outlier (fitting into society, but secretly a little deranged).
This play breaks from a traditional mould of comedic form (so far as I understand it), and yet is still somehow comic. I think the sheer madness of it all adds to its comedy. After all, we can all appreciate a little madness, can't we?
I like the connection between Berguson's article on laughter and this play. I hadn't thought of the characters in this way.
ReplyDelete(And of course I agree wholeheartedly that we are all mad.)
I did not find this play funny at all because it felt like a tragedy to me. I think that if the play had ended after Mobius had convinced the two other men that they needed to stay in the sanitarium, it would have been like one big joke that these men had played and were continuing to play on the world. They would have convinced the world that they were crazy and in doing so would have been able to hide great knowledge that the world spent who knows how much money and resources trying to acquire. However, as we all know by now that the world fooled them and locked them away as prisoners, thus a tragedy.
ReplyDeleteI loved the madness portrayed in this comedy--the tragedy of the characters, as well as their madness, adds to the unique comic element of this story. Just as we learned earlier in the semester when we studied "The Venetian Twins," there is often a tragic element to comedies.
ReplyDelete