The Heisenberg character in Frayn’s play gives two different
versions of his motives and actions as head of the German nuclear project
in the first and second acts, and toward the end even introduces a third
version. In the first (roughly) three pages of your essay, explain how the
words of the fictional Heisenberg connect with scholarly interpretations of
the historical Heisenberg?s involvement in this effort? [Consider: Should
we think of the historians also as participants in the reframing of events,
and hence as disturbing what they set out to narrate?] You should conclude
by discussing briefly what self-justification an Oppenheimer character
might have offered in a similar play centered on the Manhattan Project and
the eventual use of these weapons.
