Plot
In this western-period themed-episode, an unscrupulous peddler, after selling the executioner some five-strand rope needed for a hanging, sells a bag of "magic" dust to the condemned man's father. The condemned man had been found guilty of causing the death of a child (accidentally). The peddler collects ordinary dirt from the ground and insists that it will spread good will throughout the crowd and will make them feel love and sympathy for the man sentenced to be hanged. After making the purchase as the crowd gathers for the hanging, the man's father cries out and starts sprinkling the dust everywhere. To his dismay, he hears the floor drop behind him and turns to see that the fresh and sturdy noose has broken and his son is unharmed. When asked if another hanging attempt should be made, the girl's parents decide that it shouldn't, that the condemned man has suffered enough. As father and son walk home, the peddler discovers that he is also affected by the "magic" after throwing his gold pieces from the sale of the dust to the poor children of the town, laughing about it afterward.
Read more about this topic: Dust (The Twilight Zone)
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“There comes a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“The plot! The plot! What kind of plot could a poet possibly provide that is not surpassed by the thinking, feeling reader? Form alone is divine.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)