What would you do if you had to choose how you were going to be killed? Imagine living in a nightmarish dystopia in which logic is an enemy and truth is a menace. You’re not being sentenced to death because you’re trying to subvert the authoritarian State you’re living under or even to question its validity. You’re being sentenced to death simply because you hold the wrong thoughts in your head. That makes you a threat.
Would you choose to go quietly, beg and plead for your life, cower in fear, or try to make some sort of heroic last stand? We get to see all of those options play out when a seemingly insignificant librarian named Romney Wordsworth is called upon to choose how he will die in my favorite episode of The Twilight Zone, “The Obsolete Man.” The episode features no action sequences, moments of levity, or anything else that would, at least on the surface, draw the audience in. Instead, it relies on compelling dialogue between two characters who couldn’t be more dissimilar, and complex ideas explored in a subtle and ingenious manner. It came out at the end of the show’s second season on June 2, 1961. Fifty-eight years later, it is just as compelling as ever, and I can’t imagine it getting made today.
You see, Wordsworth is a librarian in a State that has banned books. He is a Christian in a State that denies the existence of God. And he is a free thinker in a State that demands conformity. Therefore, he must die. Those in power can’t logically refute any of his arguments, so they must kill him to silence his hate speech. Continue reading →
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