About Opentopia
Opentopia Directory Encyclopedia Tools

A Stop at Willoughby

Encyclopedia : A : AS : AST : A Stop at Willoughby

 

'The Twilight Zone'' original series
Season one (1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5)'
Fall 1959 – Summer 1960
List of The Twilight Zone'' episodes
Episodes:
  1. Where Is Everybody?
  2. One for the Angels
  3. Mr. Denton on Doomsday
  4. The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine
  5. Walking Distance
  6. Escape Clause
  7. The Lonely
  8. Time Enough at Last
  9. Perchance to Dream
  10. Judgment Night
  11. And When the Sky Was Opened
  12. What You Need
  13. The Four of Us Are Dying
  14. Third from the Sun
  15. I Shot an Arrow Into the Air
  16. The Hitch-Hiker
  17. The Fever
  18. The Last Flight
  19. The Purple Testament
  20. Elegy
  21. Mirror Image
  22. The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street
  23. A World of Difference
  24. Long Live Walter Jameson
  25. People Are Alike All Over
  26. Execution
  27. The Big Tall Wish
  28. A Nice Place to Visit
  29. Nightmare as a Child
  30. A Stop at Willoughby
  31. The Chaser
  32. A Passage for Trumpet
  33. Mr. Bevis
  34. The After Hours
  35. The Mighty Casey
  36. A World of His Own

Cast

Synopsis

[Spoiler warningSpoiler warning]: Plot and/or ending details follow.
Gart Williams is an advertising executive who has grown exasperated with the stress of the business life and constantly dreams of a peaceful place called Willoughby during his commute by train. After he finally snaps at his workplace, he exits the train while in his dream so he can live in Willoughby. In reality, he jumped off the train to his death. His body is eventually loaded into a hearse owned by Willoughby & Son Funeral Home.

Trivia

The “Bradbury account” is a reference to seminal science-fiction writer Ray Bradbury, who wrote the Twilight Zone episode “I Sing the Body Electric”.

In the story, the main character, Gart Williams works in New York but resides in the Connecticut town of Westport, which is a real town. Writer Rod Serling himself actually lived in Westport and commuted back and forth to New York City briefly in the latter part of the 1950's before he relocated out to the west coast. Also: in the scenes the train conductor walks down the aisle and reads off the list of upcoming town stops, all of which exist in real life, and are read in the correct order if one takes the Metro North Commuter Railroad (New Haven Line) from New York City's Grand Central Station.

Willoughby is also a real city in Northeast Ohio. Rod Serling lived for a time in Canton, Ohio, and if he traveled to New York by train would have ridden through the town (which, yes, had its own stop).

The town square still looks today much as it did over a hundred years ago, right down to the statue honoring local Civil War soldiers.

Themes

The theme of a man working in the business world, and the work environment becoming increasingly stressful (to the breaking point) is a familiar theme in the Twilight Zone. This theme is similarly explored in “Walking Distance”, “A World of Difference”, “The Brain Center at Whipple's” and two Serling teleplays from before and after The Twilight Zone: Patterns and the Night Gallery episode “They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar”.

External link

References

Twilight Zone links

 

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Search Titles
0123456789
ABCDEFGHIJ
KLMNOPQRST
UVWXYZ?

E-mail this article to:

Personal Message: