"The weapon" by Frederic Brown

Hi! How are you? :)

Today I’d like to talk about “The weapon” by Frederic Brown, a short story we studied at school in our English classes. It deals with Dr. James Graham, who is the key scientist of a project, which consists in the developing of an ultimate weapon. One evening a stranger, Mr. Niemand, visits him. While Niemand starts talking about the potential danger of the ambitious project, the scientist’s mentally arrested son comes in, so his father introduces the boy to Niemand, who seems to like him. The discussion between the two man continues until Niemand ask for a drink. While Graham is in the kitchen, Niemand gives Harry, the boy, a gift. Only when Niemand is gone, the scientist discovers what the gift really is: a loaded revolver, which makes him wonder that only a madman would give a weapon like that to a retarded child.. So we can think that Niemand had tried to make Graham realized how his weapon could be dangerous for the entire population, which is not ready to use it well, even though he doesn’t feel responsible for what people may do with what he’s giving to them.

I think that we can interpret the moral of this short story as a kind of comparison with actual conflicts between science or progress and moral or ethics. I’m thinking, for instance, about the discussion on nuclear power, which is an important case of the development of science which can also become a danger for the environment safety and the human being’s health. As a matter of fact, in history we can find a lot of cases of ecological disasters such as what happened in Fukushima last year or in Chernobyl in 80’s, or what has been caused in Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the explosion of the atomic bomb, which is an other example of misuse of scientific power.

So, in my opinion, this text aims at explain that we really have to pay attention to scientific discoveries and, above all, we have to learn to use knowledge in a proper, responsible and positive way.

What do you think about this issue? Are you in favour or against nuclear plants? Tell me :)