Out of Words:

A Reaction to Time Enough at Last

by Marc Lorlin Z. Navisa 2013-38337

            When Time Enough at Last ended, I was left struggling for the right word to sum up what my eyes had just been fed with. Our professor was already dismissing the class; still, nothing slipped my mind. I was so disappointed, so I settled for a substitute:

            Sick. It was sick but in a brilliant way.

Marilyn Venable’s Time Enough at Last tells the story of a bibliophilic old man, banker Henry Bemis, confronted by an anti-intellectual world—his cruel emasculating wife and grouchy boss ran that world—threatened by World War III. Bemis is an embodiment of a flawed system of anti-intellectualism and indifference to art that has been haunting our society.

The first half of the episode was dedicated to building our sympathy for him. Indeed, it is really crucial for the watchers to like the main character intensely and to expect him to emerge victorious at the end for the final twist to have full impact:

On one fateful day, when his boss turned away his gaze on him, he finally had the chance to box himself in the bank’s vault. There, he buried his nose in Mark Twain’s David Copperfield. He later got out only to find himself the lone survivor of World War III. Everybody was dead and that includes his iron-fisted wife and grumpy boss. What is he to do in a world with nothing but rubble to talk to? (Can I just say how successful John Bram was on evoking a post-apocalyptic scene here?) He found a gun and contemplated taking his life. But just as he was about to pull the trigger, a heavenly sight loomed before him. Books. In front of him was the shattered library. So he got that going for him; he marveled at the books, and picked up his favorite authors. He got all the time in the world now to read—no mean wife and a grumpy boss to pester him. He checked his glasses in his pocket. It was not there; it lay broken on the library’s pavement. He ran his hands on his eyes; his vision was blurred. Just like his future.

What an ending. Sick? No, not anymore. There’s none to be cured or corrected in Time Enough at Last. It is as beautiful as it should be.

It was twisted. And now I’m out of words.