“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
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