Rodman Edward Serling Summary

Born on December 25th 1924 to Jewish parents, Samuel Lawrence and Esther Serling, Rodman Edward Serling was an American author, screenwriter, and activist during the “Golden Age” of television. Upon graduating high school, Serling enlisted in the United States Army, where he would rise to the rank of Technician 5th Grade after having served as an Infantry Combat Demolition Specialist and Paratrooper during World War II. His experiences in the war would leave him with battle scars both physical and mental. Serling, when asked about his time in the war, often made it very clear he was not cut out for combat and turned his experiences into a driving force in his anti-war activism. After being injured while stationed overseas in the Philippines,

The former shows a platoon stationed in the Philippines- much like Serling himself- when one young man can see in the faces of those around him who is going to be the next to die. The latter focuses on a former Nazi officer who returns to Dachau to relive the "glory days" of when he used to torture prisoners, but is confronted and put on trial by the ghosts of those who died at his hands for his crimes against humanity. The episode seeks to remind viewers that their final judgment is that before God, and places like Dachau "must remain standing because they are a monument to a moment in time when some men decided to turn the Earth into a graveyard. Into it the shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge, but worst of all, their conscience. And the moment we forget this, the moment we cease to be haunted by its remembrance, then we become the gravediggers." Furthermore, "The Encounter" explores the issue of racism when A World War II veteran and a Japanese-American are trapped in the veteran 's attic and it becomes clear that old prejudices from the war have not yet subsided. Finally, "The Obsolete Man" serves as a testament that "any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of Man, that state is obsolete," a theme that once again can be connected to the mistreatment and lack of regard for human lives during the Holocaust. At this time it had not yet been twenty years since the war and Serling stood firm in his

The aforementioned Twilight Zone episode, "The Obsolete Man" speaks not only of protecting the rights of the individual, but it also delves into the topic of censorship. In a world where logic is an enemy and truth is a menace, Romney Wordsworth is put on trial for being "obsolete". A former librarian in a time when books are done away with, Wordsworth stands up to the state by reminding them that they cannot "erase God with an edict," and that, "he is nothing more than a reminder to them that they cannot destroy truth by burning pages". This theme is one that is mirrored very closely in Ray Bradbury 's dystopian novel, Fahrenheit 451. Ray Douglas Bradbury was born on August 22, 1920, to parents Spaulding Bradbury and Ester Moberg Bradbury in Waukegan, Illinois. Later becoming a literary powerhouse in the world of mainstream science fiction, Bradbury grew up admiring such authors as L. Frank Baum, Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Despite making his decision to become a writer around the age of twelve and only going as far as high school in terms of his formal education, Bradbury 's works and the style in which they were written will live on