Headscratchers / The Twilight Zone (1959) S1E8: "Time Enough at Last"

• It's possible I missed something, but the ending never struck me as a Cruel Twist Ending. There's still food, books, and other physical objects around. Wouldn't there still be glasses and even possibly contact lenses? I know it's not good to wear glasses/contacts that aren't the right prescription, but Bemis could have eventually found a pair that were close enough to allow him to continue reading.
  • He can't see without his glasses, and considering the nuclear blast, getting new glasses, proper prescription or not, is not an option.
    • But even people with severe eyesight issues can, assuming there's no other mobility issues in play, get around without corrective aides just as people who go blind later in life can relearn how to get around and perform various tasks. I'm not saying it's easy or safe, especially without someone who is able to adequately see looking out for them, but it can be done. If there's food, books, and cars, it stands to reason there are other physical objects such as clothes, toys, etc. He could wander around until he found a pair of glasses that was close enough to his prescription to allow him to read.
    • Certainly he could have, and I think that's exactly what another (more classically heroic) character would have done, but here was a character who was on the brink of suicide until he found the remains of the library. Humanity had been wiped out. He was all alone and when he had a single moment of hope, it had been cruelly snatched away from him in an instant. It may simply be that he didn't have it in him to pull himself up by his bootstraps and search, half blind, through the ruins of this dead world in the hopes of chancing across a new pair of glasses (which could be broken just as easily leaving him back where he started). Of course, one could speculate that maybe he would have avoided killing himself and would have found the strength to go on and eventually found the glasses he needed. However, I don't think that stops it from being a Cruel Twist Ending any more than a character going to prison isn't a Cruel Twist Ending simply because they might one day get out.
    • Also, as semi-addressed in the point below - any food lying around would probably be horribly irradiated, and since Henry doesn't have the luxury of a supercomputer to scan toxins for him, reading's probably all that's safe to do.
• I have trouble processing, but shouldn't Henry be exposed to mind-breaking levels of radiation from the A-bombs while the rest of humanity got an easier, quick death by being erased from existence from the blast of the nucler apocalypse? It just kinda feels like the version of God in this series is a d*ck.
  • Because if he was dying from radiation poisoning, then there wouldn’t be a story. Or, as someone theorized on the show’s WMG page, maybe he’s already dead and in Hell.
    • It could also be that the writer didn't understand the true horror of fallout.
    • It's highly likely the writer just didn't understand how bad nuclear fallout would truly be.
• Did the H-Bomb suddenly accidentally blew up or was it used against the Russians?
• Couldn't he still read if he held the pages close enough to his face?
  • Depends on if he was nearsighted or farsighted. Based on the shape of his glasses, I'd guess farsighted.
    • Although if he was farsighted that would actually make it much easier for him to navigate the world, and eventually find new glasses, bringing us back to the discussion above.
    • Given how extreme his glasses are, it's possible he had multiple eye issues compounded with near/far-sightedness. Astigmatism would explain him having poor vision no matter the distance, or he might have a different eye disease that effects eye sight like keratoconus. Either way, its possible to construct some series of issues that would both make his vision make sense and help explain why searching for an optometrist's office doesn't seem to occur to him—even if he did find one, it's near impossible to believe one would have unbroken glasses that work for him still laying around!

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