Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in An Experiment with an Air Pump, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Science and Morality
Human Industry and the Limitations of Knowledge
The Ideal vs. Lived Experience
Passion vs. Rationality
Summary
Analysis
Scene Two picks up in the same room, but the year is 1999. The stage is bare other than the desk, an electric fire, tea chests, and scattered piles of books and clothing. A single lightbulb illuminates the room. Kate talks on her cell phone as Ellen packs. Kate ends her call and tells Ellen that she’ll need Ellen’s answer by New Year’s Eve. She asks Ellen if Ellen has discussed things with Tom. Ellen ignores the question and tells Kate she’ll figure everything out.
The fact that the stage directions specify that the play’s 1999 timeline takes place in the same room suggests a link—thematic or otherwise—between the 1799 story and the 1999 story, though what that link is remains unclear. Also note the single lightbulb at the stage’s center; it’s seemingly a modern take on the single light that illuminated the Wright painting and the opening scene of the play. The bulb—a symbol of humanity’s capacity for truth and knowledge—suggests that the themes of science, morality, and progress present in the 1799 timeline will reappear in the 1999 timeline, too.
Themes
Phil enters, tape measurer in hand, and asks to measure the room. Ellen explains to Kate that Phil is doing a building survey. Kate leaves abruptly to make tea. Ellen explains to Phil that Kate is an old colleague of hers who is staying with her and Tom. Phil starts measuring and remarks on the room’s large size. Ellen explains that this is why she and Tom have to sell it—it’s been in her family for generations, but it’s become too much to keep up with.
Ellen’s remark about the house being in her family for generations could suggest that she’s in some way related to the Fenwicks, though the play doesn’t make this clear. At any rate, her decision to sell the house denotes a break with the past and traditions and an embrace of the future. Kate’s abrupt departure seems to suggest that there’s some animosity between herself and Phil, though it’s clear they’ve never met before. Perhaps Kate’s cold demeanor foreshadows a conflict that will develop between these two characters as the plot unfolds.
Themes
Ellen asks what Phil plans to do with this room, and Phil explains that the building will be used in the “corporate hospitality” industry—this room will become a private bar, and there will also be conference rooms, a private gym, and a sauna. Phil also expects that they’ll reopen one of the old mines and hire former miners “to dress up as miners and pretend to dig coal” to entertain tourists. Ellen is aghast; she notes that Lavoisier, a scientist who discovered the process of combustion, once visited the house—and Thomas Paine held secret meetings here, too. She can’t believe that people would turn a place rooted in such “radicalism” into an awful tourist trap.
Phil’s description of what the “corporate hospitality” industry plans to do to Ellen’s historic house paints a bleak picture of all that society loses when it chooses to disregard the past in favor of a progressive, utilitarian future. Meanwhile, Ellen’s citing of Thomas Paine and Lavoisier—radicals who themselves broke with tradition in pursuit of progress and an improved quality of life—shows that progress and being future-oriented in general can be valuable, too.
Themes
Phil asks Ellen if Tom is a scientist like she is. Kate reenters and explains that Tom is an English lecturer. Phil changes the subject to ask Ellen’s advice about his daughter—Phil suspects she has a jam allergy—but Ellen explains that she’s a research scientist, not a medical doctor, and can’t help him.
This scene establishes the 1999 timeline’s opposing sides: scientists Ellen and Kate and nonscientists Phil and Tom. And Tom’s career as an English lecturer also aligns him with 1799’s Susannah, who values the arts over science. It’s thus becoming clearer what the link between the two timelines might be: both stories debate the intersection between morality and science.
Themes
Get the entire An Experiment with an Air Pump LitChart as a printable PDF.
Phil asks about Ellen’s research. Phil says he’s fascinated by black holes: the way they suck light into them and never let it out. Ellen shrugs; she doesn’t know much about black holes. Phil asks about Ellen’s research again. She says something vague about working in genetics and then looks at her watch, wondering aloud what’s taking Tom so long. Phil asks if Ellen works in “cloning” and doesn’t believe Ellen when she says she doesn’t. Then he asks her about spontaneous combustion, recounting a friend who found his neighbor “fried to a crisp.” Ellen insists that spontaneous combustion is just an urban legend.
Phil’s apparently genuine belief in kooky conspiracy theories, in addition to offering comic relief, pits him against rational, scientifically inclined characters like Ellen and Kate. At the same time, though his beliefs might be far-fetched and not rooted in legitimate research, they still demonstrate that he, like Kate and Ellen, has a fundamental curiosity about the world and a desire to make sense of the world.
Themes
Phil asks Ellen what she thinks of aliens. Ellen says she doesn’t believe in them, and Phil says he dislikes how closeminded scientists are. Ellen apologizes but explains that science isn’t about “belief”—it’s about “evidence.” She doesn’t think aliens exist because she’s never seen any proof that they do. Phil says Ellen can’t be certain about this, but Ellen says that’s the point: she’s not sure, but she’d gladly change her mind if someone presented her with evidence. Phil recalls a friend of his who saw a UFO. Ellen tells Phil that anecdotal evidence doesn’t count, since people can just make things up. Phil asks why anyone would do this. Ellen says people like to tell stories about things they can’t explain.
Though Phil’s beliefs are rather unorthodox and unfounded, he’s not totally off-base to call Ellen closeminded. Though his anecdotal evidence is dubious at best, he’s essentially arguing that he believes in aliens because he’s seen no evidence to the contrary—which isn’t all that different from or more convincing than Ellen’s stance, which is that she doesn’t believe in aliens because she hasn’t seen any proof that they do exist. Finally, Ellen’s remark about people telling stories about the things they can’t explain gets at humanity’s impulse to understand then world around them. In a sense, scientific inquiry is an extension of this impulse.
Themes
Phil continues to pester Ellen about what kind of science she does. Finally, Ellen tells him that she researches strategies for detecting fetal abnormalities, explaining that many people misunderstand her work and hurl unfair accusations at her.
Ellen’s roundabout way of saying she’s involved in genetic research suggests that she feels morally conflicted about her work—and perhaps can even understand the accusations that people hurl at her, at least to a degree.
Themes
Kate returns with a tray of hot toddies. Ellen explains to Phil that Kate’s company wants to offer her a high-paying job, but she doesn’t know if she should take it—and her husband, Tom, has reservations about it, too. Kate says Ellen is being silly, but Ellen accuses Kate, who is 15 years younger, of still being “in love with the work” and “want[ing] to be God.”
In claiming that Kate still “wants to be God,” Ellen suggests that Kate’s passion for science is less neutral than Kate would like to think it is—in fact, she’s less driven by the desire to advance humanity than she is by the desire for power, control, and renown.
Themes
Kate doesn’t understand Ellen’s reservations and poses a hypothetical to Phil to make her point. She asks him what he and his wife would do if, early in his wife’s pregnancy, they were able to discover an abnormality, like a gene for Alzheimer’s disease, for instance. She explains that Ellen’s work has found a noninvasive, safe, and reliable way to test for abnormalities early in pregnancy. Kate’s company wants to invest money in Ellen’s research so that testing is available to the masses, and Kate thinks this is an undeniably good thing. Ellen tells Phil that she’s involved in a project called the “Human Genome Project,” whose goal is to “map[] the human gene system[.]”
Kate’s argument for gene mapping is that, through eliminating horrible diseases, it will decrease suffering and improve the overall quality of life. For Kate, that gene mapping could decrease human suffering excuses it on a moral level. But Kate has provided just one example of one good thing that could come from gene mapping—and completely disregards gene mapping’s morally ambiguous implications, and this betrays the unnuanced, subjective quality of her perspective.
Themes
Phil, however, isn’t so sure that the project is a good thing. He recalls his uncle Stan, who was “manic depressive.” Phil describes Stan as “magic” and recalls a childhood memory of Stan building Phil a tree house covered in shells and pieces of colored glass. For Phil, Ellen’s research means “No more Uncle Stans.” Kate accuses Phil of romanticizing his memories of Stan, an accusation that’s reaffirmed when Phil admits that Stan died by suicide.
This guide will use the terminology the play uses to describe Stan’s illness, but also note that “manic depression” is no longer in use—the DSM-V refers to this mental illness as Bipolar Disorder. Phil offers his Uncle Stan example to reveal the blind spots in Kate’s stance: she’s effectively insinuating that it’s possible for a human to say how much suffering a disease must cause to warrant its elimination—to objectively identify the point at which a person’s life becomes not worth living as a consequence of the suffering they experience. Phil believes that Stan is proof that this isn’t so easily done. Even if his uncle did eventually die of suicide (which Kate sees as evidence of Stan’s unbearable suffering), it’s also true that Stan experienced a degree of happiness and fulfillment while he was alive, too.
Themes
Tom enters the room just then, dressed in outdoor clothes and looking shaken. Ellen asks him what’s wrong, and Tom explains that he found a box of bones hidden in one of the kitchen cupboards. Then the scene fades to black, and the characters exit the stage.
Tom’s dismay at finding a box of bones is evidence of his sentimentality about the past, further showing how Tom and Ellen’s opposite priorities (Tom has a lot of reverence for the past, meanwhile Ellen, as a geneticist, is focused on progress and future scientific breakthroughs) drives a wedge between them. Indeed, that the scene fades to black before Ellen can respond suggests that Tom’s discovery isn’t as troubling to her as it is to Tom.
Themes
Maria appears onstage and reads aloud a letter from Edward. Edward describes an illness he’s suffering from: his neck feels better, but now his gums are white and bleed when he eats. Then he recounts how the Collector’s horse was bitten by a large snake, which one of Edward’s colleagues then beat to death with a club. Seeing the snake made Edward miss England, where no such dangerous creatures live. Still, he admits that his dreams of England are somewhat idealized.
These recurring scenes in which Maria reads aloud from Edward’s letters reinforces the disparity between the ideal and lived experience, a disparity that Edward readily acknowledges when he admits he's likely letting his homesickness for England cloud his memory of the actual England he left behind.
Themes
