Thursday, January 16, 2014

Life in Solitude: A Reaction Paper on "The Twilight Zone (Episode: Time Enough At Last)"

“Time is gold.” This is a saying all of us are probably very familiar with. It is essentially saying that time is precious, how it is in fact lost in simply seconds, literally. And this is especially showed in the life of Henry Bemis, a bank teller and avid bookworm, as depicted in an episode of The Twilight Zone entitled Time Enough At Last.
Bemis lives a life constantly looking for time to read. One day he goes to the bank vault to just read undisturbed, but, as he reads a news article about a bomb, he suddenly feels the tremors of an explosion. He’s completely fine but once he goes out of the vault everything else and everyone else is not. He is the only one left, everyone, everything is gone. He lost hope and was about to end his life when he spots the public library. He discovers that although the library has been severely damaged, the books haven't. Suddenly seeing a bright silver lining, he gathers and organizes all the books. He finally has the time to just read. But just as he starts to read, he stumbles and his glasses fall and break. This makes him basically blind, blind to read.
If I were to make an updated adaptation of the story, putting it in the context of our present-day, it'd be quite simple. I'd simply change books to computers or laptops or even phones and Bemis's glasses to its power supply. Everyone today has probably used a computer at some point in his or her life. It's something we can all admit that is very useful yet addicting, especially with the internet. Like how books were to Bemis, if a person were to be deserted in a devastated city, a computer or any gadget that would provide him with communication is what I think would make him most happy, would give him the most hope. And like Bemis, we often don't realize that this bliss, the bliss of having access to these luxuries, is dependent on something we often cannot control or something we don't realize was even essential. We often get stuck staring at the screens, living our virtual lives more often than our actual lives. We then only realize our true solitude when we are presented with something that gives us happiness and hope, only to get our access to it taken away and now we can't do anything with it because we now have nothing and no one.
This episode has so many ideas and can be interpreted in so many ways. It showed how some of the oddest things could save you. It showed how the advancement of technology destroyed everything and everyone but not written knowledge, buildings but not books. But to me, it most importantly showed the importance of balance in life, balance between fantasy and reality, solitude and companionship. To Bemis, books and reading were the most important. There was nothing wrong with this passion; it just got him to ignore everything and everyone else. It got him to ignore life.

Audrey Anne A. Arocha

2012-51626

No comments:

Post a Comment