The Silence (The Twilight Zone)
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“The Silence” is an episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.
[edit] Details
- Episode number: 61
- Season: 2
- Production code: 3658
- Original air date: April 28, 1961
- Writer: Rod Serling
- Director: Boris Sagal
- Producer: Buck Houghton
- Director of photography: George T. Clemens
- Music: uncredited (including, a first, the Marius Constant Twilight Zone theme as incidental music)
[edit] Cast
- Archie Taylor: Franchot Tone
- Jamie Tennyson: Liam Sullivan
- George Alfred: Jonathan Harris
- Franklin: Cyril Delevanti
[edit] Synopsis
Archie Taylor, a member of an exclusive club, bets another member, Jamie Tennyson, half a million dollars that he can’t stay quiet for an entire year. Jamie wins the bet but can’t collect because Archie long since went bankrupt. Moreover, to ensure victory, Jamie had his vocal chords severed.
[edit] Trivia
This episode was an unusual entry in the series as it contains no supernatural or science fiction elements. Other such episodes include “Where Is Everybody?”, “The Shelter”, and “The Jeopardy Room”.
[edit] Discussion
- The following is an excerpt of a lecture given by Rod Serling that was included as an extra on The Twilight Zone’s laserdisc release. It was transcribed by Matthew Cregg.
Serling: I mention storylines and you both indicated that it had been done, and I didn’t realize it. That’s a risk you run, often. Even the best read of us, not to be defensive about it, aren’t totally aware of all the classic literature and you’ll come up with a plot line which you think is altogether unique and your own. I once did a show on The Twilight Zone about a guy who makes a bet that he can keep quiet for a whole year. Now, I did not realize it at the time, but there was a short story called “The Bet” and I think a Chekhov short story unless I’m mistaken...
Steve: That’s the one where he’s locked in the glass room at the Men’s Club.
Serling: That’s right. He constantly talks, and a fella says to him, “If you keep quiet and are willing to be under observation, so we know you don’t talk, and not say a word for one year, I’ll give you 50,000 pounds.” And he says, “Great.” Because he desperately needed the money. So they put him in this glass room. Do you recall this story?
Steve: [Nodding] Mmm-hmm.
Serling: And he doesn’t say a word. And there are two switches to this story. Number one, the year ends and he is let out of his glass room, and in truth, he has said not a word. But the guy who made the bet with him, despite the fact that he’s a member of the club, doesn’t have 50,000 pounds. He doesn’t have five pounds. And here is a guy who has remained silent for an entire year to win a bet and a guy can’t cover, can’t honor, his bet. Then the second switch is that our talkative one is so talkative, that he really didn’t believe that he could stay quiet, so he had his larynx cut, the soundbox. So you have the double irony there. Now if, for example, I pose the problem to you that there is a talkative one amongst us, and somebody makes a bet with him that he’ll remain silent for a year, can you fill up a story this way? What happens?
[Silence falls over the crowd]
Serling: The silence is absolutely... [Laughs]
Steve: You can take it a lot of different ways.
Serling: Tell me one.
Steve: You could take it in terms of what the man then does do assuming that he’s not put in such a glass cage.
Serling: Go on.
Steve: Assuming that he then must fulfill his need to talk by other activities.
Serling: Go on. You’re coming close to Chekhov now, Steve.
Steve: You can take it through all kinds of very, very strong emotions. Very, very strong kinds of physical things. You could take it to his writings, you could take it to a certain kind of concentration of his own inner self, self analysis...
Serling: So what happens at the end of the year? No, follow the point. Can you tell me?
Steve: As I said, there are five or six different ways that you could do each of these.
Serling: Alright, let’s say—I’m going to give you the Chekhov line now—there’s an altogether shallow, talkative, big-mouthed klutz, who makes this bet. In the Chekhov story, he goes in for the first time in his life, has a kind of enforced serenity, there’s nothing he can do because talking has always been this sort of forced measure, that’s all he can do properly. He begins to read. You recall this story, Doris? And after 12 months of reading the classic literature of our time, he comes out the most well-rounded, the most beautifully thoughtful, sensitive human being who ever lived. He knows Thoreau, he knows Socrates, he knows Moses, he knows the Word of God, he knows the ancients and of the angels, and he becomes an altogether incredibly well-rounded man. That’s the Chekhov story.
Art: There’s another way you could take that.
Serling: Go.
Art: Assuming that he accepted the bet, and then following him in the situations where we normally communicate our feeling by talking, in a love situation with a child, with friends and all of the emotions, and then scoring the fact that he’s having a very difficult time and is very articulate by action, by the actions of love or fatherhood, the languages of sign, and touch—
Serling: Without voice, he cannot do these things.
Art: ...but finding at the end of the year he gets less, he brings this under control so that at the end of the year, when he’s about to win the bet, that doesn’t matter any more because he’s found that words aren’t a particularly—
Serling: That’s pretty reasonable.
Doris: I’m more cruel than that because I would have him need that money desperately. He feels that the money would help him get his marriage on stable ground, have his children love him and all this sort of thing, but by the time he’s been quiet and hasn’t communicated with anybody for a year, everything’s fallen apart anyway, and the money won’t help him.
Art: That goes back to the old, you know, “My wife needs an operation,” or something.
Dave: Say, when he went in the room he felt he needed the money. When he came out, he no longer felt he needed the money at all.
Serling: Exactly the Chekhov line, Dave.
Dave: But as he walks out of the room, everybody will not talk to him. They just walk away and then he sees the hearse go by on the road.
Serling: [Nodding] Mmm-hmm. You went Chekhov one better.
[edit] References
- Zicree, Marc Scott. The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 (second edition).
