The Physicists: Mobius

The Physicists: Mobius

Mobius: I should have never been one, Jorg-Lukas. Never. I wouldn’t be in the madhouse now.

            Just as someone else stated in their blog, I really did enjoy reading this play by Durrenmatt. The play was full of twists and turns and had a lot of “WTF” moments. I would proudly proclaim that this is my favorite play we have read in class thus far.

Durrenmatt wrote the Physicists in the early 1960’s.  It was a time of which nuclear war was taking place and the possible destruction of civilization felt like a very real possibility. A theme presented in this play is one that involves the fear of what mankind is capable of and how scientific progress can be used for wrong doings, especially if it got in the hands of a powerful government. With that being said, my favorite character was of course Mobius. He was a very smart physicist who came up with scientific discoveries in his research. He feared that his findings would get in the hands of the wrong people so he chose not to reveal his work. To make sure of it, he faked his insanity to protect his knowledge. I would say his research and work eventually made him go insane.

I kind of relate to Mobius in a way. He loved his work but it was just too much for him to handle. I once was a chemistry major a long long time ago. Then I took a classed called organic chemistry and I just could not take any more of this thing that they called chemistry. That class was not even hard-core as the stories I hear about physical chemistry. I knew I could not handle that kind of information very well so I decided to changed my major to biology. Biology… I can handle that. In conclusion, the Physicists was a very clever comedy. I enjoyed it very much and I applaud to the ending.

The Physicists - Fear of the Unknown

          After reading through the play, one theme was particularly prominent to me, which was the fear of the unknown. Being written in the same era as the invention of the atomic bomb and the cold war, I could only imagine terrors that would be haunting everyone, everywhere around the war. The fear of military weapons, the unpredictable power of science and the fear of simple tomorrow were probably only a few of the widely spread anxieties.

          Readers were introduced to a less intense form of this fear when Mobius started yelling at his wife and children, cursing them to die in the deepest hole of the Mariana trench. It was clear that they were shocked and scared of Mobius because they did not know how far gone his mental state was at the moment and how bad and ugly the situation was going to be. They were not equipped with the knowledge of handling a mentally unstable patient and the fact that there were two murders beforehand at the same drawing room did not help.

         At the end of the story, Mobius himself revealed that he was fearful of the consequences if his works on the Principle of Universal Discovery were to be published:

        “The result is – devastating. New and inconceivable forces would be unleashed, making possible a technical advance that would transcend the wildest flights of fantasy if my findings were to fall into the hands of mankind.”

     Even though Mobius was the founder of the Principle of Universal Discovery, he himself did not fully understand the possibility and impact of his discoveries. Being sideline to a raging war, a highly terrified mentality would choose to obey its paranoia and assume the worst at circumstances. Therefore, it was not unusual for Mobius to expect the worst of mankind and to assume that his shared knowledge would be put to use in devising new technologies to bring more harm to mankind that was far beyond imagination.