The Physicists- A Prime Paradox

     The Physicists was paradoxical, just as the author promised it to be in his “21 Points” at the back of the book. The paradox of the whole play is the fact that the three patients are all mad, yet they are all sane. Of course I’m inclined to believe they are mostly mad, but it is unfair to not mention the few moments they are sane. The moments are when Mobius purposely acts like a lunatic to make the separation easier on his family. Another example is when Eisler and Kilton are willing to lay down their weapons and calmly discuss things.  Mad men don’t usually act like that. I think the reason they were able to have their brief moments of sanity is because their whole lives as scientists have been devoted to logic and reason. When it has been so ingrained into you, it is hard to ever be anything but logical. Which is where the quote “what was once thought can never be unthought” first comes into play. Another way this quote is at work is in the family’s perception of Mobius. Let’s be real for a moment. Even if he were to get released from the mental hospital, his family will probably still think he is mad.  Madness makes it hard to build back your reputation. We’ve all seen the movies where someone is released from a mental hospital and they seem completely fine. But then they go on a killing spree the next day. True or not, the stereotype is still present. 

Did anyone else feel this way about the ending?

The Physicists - We're All Mad

The Physicists, a play by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, has the interesting dichotomy (at least to me) of being both convoluted, and clear-cut. Half the time, the action seemed over-dramatized (like the revelation of the physicists' true identities), but this shock-and-awe discovery only seemed to heighten the humor of the entire piece. I wasn't sure if I was laughing in the appropriate places (like when the nurses were murdered, or when Von Zahnd finally let slip her master plan), but this, I believe, only justifies Newton's response on page 89: We're all mad.

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?