The Physicists: Action Among Madmen

The play The Physicists started off with several pages of description of the setting. In the midst of this excessive description, the author offered the explanation "The action takes place among madmen and therefore requires a classical framework to keep it in shape." The author explains also that the play will adhere to the Aristotelian unities of place, time, and action. It is my understanding that these unities of Aristotle were typical for a tragedy. Therefore, I assume that this play will be somewhat tragic.
For me, the tragedy came not from the events but from the setting. All of the action, that is, all of the acts were set in the same dreary sitting room. I think the best description of this room is claustrophobic. When reading, I scrunched up my shoulders because even through the pages I could feel myself being stuck in the tiny room. The three pages of description suddenly seemed well done. Although eerie, the room was the perfect place for this comedy. It was the room, in fact, that helped me to see the humour in the play more than anything. This classical setting helped to draw out the satire in The Physicists. If the play had taken place in a larger, less eccentric room, the acts of the alleged madman wouldn't be satiric but rather only strange.
In the back of the book, there are listed twenty one points to the physicists including the points that playwrights and physicists are not able to avoid paradoxes. The cramped quarters of the room also lend themselves nicely to the paradoxes in the play.
In conclusion, the setting in the play, the sitting room in the madhouse, is the perfect setting for a play that is tragically comedic, stuffed with mad physicists and rife with paradoxes.

The Physicists: Justice is on Holiday

“Justice, my friend, is a terrible strain; you wear yourself out in its service, both physically and morally...”

The Inspector says these lines upon his return to the sanatorium after Mobius murders his nurse, in reference to not needing to arrest these three insane murderers. However, these men believed they were necessary casualties along the way to securing their own idea of justice.

Newton and Einstein believed that Mobius was, in reality, a brilliant physicist. Each was willing to make sacrifices including committing themselves to a sanatorium and murdering someone in order to retrieve Mobius for their side. Newton and Einstein believe it is Mobius' responsibility, his moral duty, to release his findings to the world at large in order to improve it. Mobius, on the other hand, believes that research will ultimately be used for terrible deeds, much as Einstein's research allowed the production of atomic bombs. Mobius felt morally obligated to hide his findings from the world, instead sacrificing his freedom, family, and potential reputation by being put in the sanatorium.

Each of these three men have “sacrificed” the justice of others in order to enforce their own, and in the end agree that Mobius is correct; his findings must not be released to the world. However, as the play draws to a close it is revealed that their attempts have been for naught, and in their effort to deny the world Mobius' knowledge for the greater good has ultimately delivered the knowledge solely in the hands of someone who will use it for no good. Justice is on holiday.

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.

(img: source)

"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?

Scientific Discovery

“There are certain risks that one may not take: the destruction of humanity is one…Our researches are perilous, our discoveries are lethal.” These statements made by Mobius in act two of The Physicists are two that I find to be true today as well as back in the 1960s when this play was written. For centuries, man has used science to solve the laws of nature. However, since World War II, man has used science as a means to develop the biggest guns, medicines to cure every disease, and nuclear bombs and missiles. At what point, though, does man see that their continued discoveries are harming the world as much as helping it?

In The Physicists, Mobius stumbled upon his Principle of Universal Discovery like Louis Pasteur stumbled upon Penicillin. Instead of selling his discovery to the highest bidding nation, Mobius saw that this discovery had the potential to destroy mankind and thus chose to hide it. Now I am not saying that the discovery of Penicillin was a bad discovery, however, the researches that its discovery spawned led to derivatives of Penicillin being discovered, which led to the discovery of more derivatives of those drugs, which led to the overuse of antibiotics, which led to the development of drug resistant bacteria and newer and deadlier diseases.

Before reading The Physicists, my opinion was that if I made a major discovery such as a cure for AIDS, I would withhold the discovery just like Mobius did with his, minus checking myself into a sanitarium. Why does man not use the knowledge it already has to help the world more by producing enough drugs to help third world countries combat diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis? My answer is that the scientists choose not to witness the consequences of their discoveries. If they did, they may react like Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb, when he witnessed the testing of his creation, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

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.

The Physicists-Repetition

            The beginning of Act II closely resembles the beginning of Act I.  A nurse has just been murdered and the Inspector is at the scene to investigate.  However, in Act I, the Inspector calls the physicist who murdered his nurse a murderer and Sister Boll corrects him and insists on calling the physicist an assailant and the murder an accident.  In contrast, in Act II, the Inspector corrects Fraulein Doktor when she says “murderer” and “murder” and seems pleased when she corrects herself by saying “assailant” and “accident.”  He has had quite a change of attitude from his first appearance. 

            Another instance of repetition occurs Newton admits his true identity to Mobius and then Einstein reveals his identity.  They say almost the exact same things.  Then at the very end of the play, each physicist states him name, date and place of birth, and a summary of his life.  So we have three different examples of repetition in The Physicists.  In my opinion, anything that happens three times is important.  So what can we learn from these excerpts?

            That’s a tough question, and honestly, I’m not sure if I know the answer.  It’s possible that all these occurrences are not isolated events and have all happened more than twice.  Although this play seems like it has a definite beginning and end, we have no idea what the Inspector said when he arrived at the “villa” to investigate the first death, and we don’t get to see how the three physicists act once Fraulein Doktor has officially taken over the facility.  Maybe they will continue speaking in similar ways, and maybe they won’t.  As the audience, we only get a little piece of the timeline. 

                        One possible reason of the repetition could be to illustrate that life is more of a circle than a straight line.  The phrase “history repeats itself” comes to mind.  One the other hand, we could interpret the use of repetition as a way of showing how people act like those around them.  I would love to hear other people’s ideas about the purpose of repetition!