The Twilight Zone: "The Obsolete Man"

          While watching The Twilight Zone’s episode entitled “The Obsolete Man,” I couldn’t help but remember the lessons in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. As a matter of fact, the similarities are striking: books are banned by a totalitarian government threatened by the fear that books and knowledge will bring individual thought, novel ideas, and eventually a distrust of the dictatorship. Conformity to the acceptable standards of society is of the utmost importance and questioning authority brings dire consequences, including the sentence of death. Placed in context, both “The Obsolete Man” and Fahrenheit 451 warn society about the problems with conformity that have dominated the 1950s. In fact, conformity in the extreme as shown in this Twilight Zone episode destroys individual thought, thus making books “obsolete” in a society where the government standards of conformity are all that matters. Interestingly, “The Obsolete Man’s” main character, the librarian who cherishes books, is named “Wordsworth,” like the memorable romantic poet, William Wordsworth. The librarian’s name, then, becomes a metaphor for classic literature in addition to the more obvious play on words - "words" and "worth." Wordsworth values the written word and claims that “no man is obsolete” which he proves upon his own death. Ironically, the fact that his execution was used to scare society into submission makes Wordsworth’s life meaningful. But Wordsworth makes his point even more eloquently by revealing the Chancellor’s true character, that of cowardice, which inadvertently dubs the Chancellor “obsolete” in his own society. 

          It is important to remember the time in which this episode originally aired. The year 1961 was in the height of the Cold War, with Cuba falling to Communism under Fidel Castro and the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, Checkpoint Charlie is established and the Berlin Wall goes up in Germany, and Kennedy's Vienna Conference with Khrushchev dominates politics, highlighting Cold War tensions with the Soviet Bloc which had inadvertently just entered the Western Hemisphere by taking Cuba. One of the strongest arguments against Communism put forth by the United States was that of conformity.  Communists lost all individual thought and were not allowed to question authority, making "The Obsolete Man" an anti-Communist weapon disguised as entertainment.  In this episode, The Twilight Zone achieves its goal, sending a warning about conformity without question through excellent storytelling, something The Twilight Zone does so well.