explanation for the narrative conflict and use the final structural twist characteristic of the series
to introduce the paradigm that throws the entire narration into the fantastic mode. The very
Oedipal “Young Man’s Fancy,” which shows the reluctance of a soon to be married man to part
with the house in which he grew up, appears to be for the most part the description of a
psychologically weak individual slowly regressing into childhood in a slightly pathetic way;
however, at the very end of the syntagm, as he decides, much to his bride’s dismay, not to
leave the house, his deceased mother appears, and the final shots are those of a young boy
asking the now ex-fianc6e to leave, as the narration moves from Oedipal delusion territory into
the fantastic realm.
Following the same structural pattern although using radically different paradigms,
“Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" tells the somewhat ridiculous hallucination of a man afraid of flying
who sees an ape-like creature literally peeling one of the wings of the plane in the middle of
the flight. Since the protagonist is the only one able to see the strange creature and as his
behavior grows increasingly erratic, we become convinced of his delusional state, confirmed
by the evolution of the narration, for we see him appropriating a gun and shooting at the
creature through the window before being evacuated on a stretcher once the plane has
landed. However the very end of the syntagm shows a definite damage to one of the wings,
which corresponds to what the protagonist saw, hence opening wide what appeared so far to
be a closed narrative structure. What we were led to believe all along the narration as being
the hallucinations of the protagonist caused by his irrational fear of flying turns out to be true,
and the uncanny is allowed to become fantastic thanks to a very final narrative twist, a
trademark of the series which admirably suits the fantastic effect. For the same reasons as the
written fantastic privileged the short format in order to maintain a delicate balance between the
believable and the rationally unacceptable, the final twist typical of the Twilight Zone episodes
allows to introduce an unresolvable semiotic conflict into the narration without jeopardizing the
coherence of the narrative universe - indeed, by placing the incriminating evidence that proves
the existence of the impossible at the very end of the syntagm, the economy of the narration
leaves no chance to the receptor to accept or reject such clash, and hence retains authority.15
15 The em blem atic clich6 of the hand coming out of a freshly dug grave right before the screen fades to black in
most zom bie movies is probably the most recognizable graphic representation of the open structure typical of the
fantastic - even the protagonist of the last version of uLe Horla" concludes his diary, hence the narration, with a
question mark.
56