Faith and the Fifth Dimension: "Time Enough at Last" (November 20, 1959)

“Time Enough at Last” is one of The Twilight Zone’s most beloved episodes, thanks both to Burgess Meredith’s endearing portrayal of bookish, bespectacled bank teller Henry Bemis and one of the twistiest twist endings in the entire series. When Bemis, apparently the sole survivor of a nuclear cataclysm, finally has nothing but time to read, his glasses break, leaving him unable to read.

It’s a beloved episode, but it’s also a bitterly cruel one. Over the years, I’ve gone back and forth about whether Bemis’ broken glasses are an example of the poetic justice The Twilight Zone so often metes out. I’ve decided they’re not. 

Bemis may be hopelessly socially inept, but he’s no misanthrope (unlike Walter Bedeker from “Escape Clause”). Considering all the cartoonishly disagreeable people in his life who hate his reading habit, Bemis’ first reaction at finding himself the last man on Earth might have been sheer joy, but it isn’t. He roams the post-nuclear landscape calling out for his wife, Helen (Jacqueline deWit), even though she went so far as to deface his favorite book of poetry. “The worst part,” Bemis muses, “the very worst part is being alone.” As happy as Bemis is in the company of books, even such a bibliophile as he knows books do not make sufficient companions.

What’s more, his plan to read his way through the devastated library’s holdings, month by month and year by year, is a radical act of resilience. Let’s not forget: Just before he spied the library, Bemis was holding a gun to his head, telling himself he knew he’d be forgiven for taking his own life, considering his extreme circumstances. Even after nuclear armageddon, Henry Bemis had found a reason to go on living.

Why does the story deny him the chance to read, alone, for the rest of his days? Serling’s closing narration is the key. As entertaining as the episode is, as marvelous a performance as Burgess Meredith gives, Serling’s parting words remind us that Henry Bemis is now “just a fragment of what Man has deeded to himself.” 

Serling is ultimately less concerned with the fate of Henry Bemis than with the fate of the human race. And so there really can be no happy ending for Henry Bemis, not when his “time enough at last” to read came as the byproduct of humanity’s great cruelty to itself. Resilience is good and important—but we humans must exercise it now, before the great disaster.

I am left remembering King Hezekiah. When he heard the prophet Isaiah foretell the people’s exile in Babylon—a military defeat, a social disaster, and a theological trauma like Israel had never known—Hezekiah didn’t get upset. He piously praised the word from God that Isaiah spoke as good, because he thought to himself, “There will be peace and security in my days” (Isaiah 39.8).

Henry Bemis is no King Hezekiah, to be sure. But I can appreciate why Serling did not leave us with a story in which even one person had “peace and security in [his] days”—“time enough at last”—that came as a result of time running out for everyone else.