The Passersby

"**The Passersby**"
"The Passersby"
The Twilight Zone episode
Episode no.	Season 3; Episode 4
Directed by	Elliot Silverstein
Written by	Rod Serling
Featured music	Fred Steiner
Production code	4817
Original air date	October 6, 1961
Guest appearances
	James Gregory; Joanne Linville; Warren Kemmerling; Rex Holman; David Garcia; Austin Green;
Episode chronology
← Previous; "The Shelter"	Next →; "A Game of Pool"
	The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) (season 3)
	List of episodes

"The Passersby" is the 69th episode of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone.

Opening narration

As the episode starts, a group of Civil War soldiers are walking down a road as Rod Serling does his narration:

This road is the afterwards of the Civil War. It began at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, and ended at a place called Appomattox. It's littered with the residue of broken battles and shattered dreams.

After some dialogue is exchanged by the Sergeant and Lavinia Godwin, Rod Serling resumes his opening narration:

In just a moment, you will enter a strange province that knows neither North nor South, a place we call—The Twilight Zone.

Plot

At the end of the Civil War, a Confederate Army Sergeant (James Gregory), apparently wounded in battle, walks down a road aided by a wooden crutch. He carries with him a dirty bed roll and a homemade guitar. The limping Sergeant comes across a ruined antebellum mansion which belongs to Lavinia Godwin (Joanne Linville), whose husband had gone off to fight in the war and whose bitterness towards the Union still survives.

The Sergeant receives permission from Lavinia to refresh himself at the well, and then to sit on a bench under a dead tree in her front yard. He plays his guitar, singing the folk song Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair. Lavinia recognizes the tune as one that her husband used to sing. The two watch as a steady stream of soldiers, belonging to both the Union and the Confederacy, pass by the house and continue on down the road.

The Sergeant learns that Lavinia has been very ill, and that her husband was a Confederate Captain killed in battle. As they are reminiscing, the dark silhouette of a Yankee Lieutenant stops by the home to ask for a drink of water. As the Lieutenant pauses at the front of the home on his horse, the Sergeant recognizes him as the man that saved his life by stopping the bleeding when his foot was blown off during a battle earlier in the war. Lavinia meanwhile rushes into the house to retrieve an old shotgun and fires a bullet at the Yankee as recompense for the death of her husband. The bullet passes through the Lieutenant and he remarks that nothing matters anymore. The Sergeant gives him a drink of water from the well and the Yankee continues on his way.

The night passes and the Sergeant begins to realize that this is not a normal road and these are not ordinary wounded soldiers. He tells Lavinia that in the early morning hours of dawn it he realized there is something at the end of the road and that he has to find out what it is. As the Sergeant turns to leave, Lavinia moves in front of him and tries to persuade him to stay. Then in the background they hear a man's voice singing the same folk song the Sergeant had played earlier on his guitar -- Black is the Lover of My True Love's Hair. The man is Lavinia's husband, Jud.

Jud tells Lavinia that everyone on the road is indeed dead, including her. She passed from the typhoid fever from which she thought she had recovered and he from a Yankee bullet. The Sergeant, understanding the Jud's words, sighs and begins to walk down the road, but Lavinia refuses to believe him. Jud tells her that there is nothing left for him in that house. Insisting that she is alive, Lavinia pleads with her husband to stay. Jud refuses and continues his journey, disregarding his wife's pleas but reassuring her that he will be waiting for her at the end of the road.

Lavinia cries out to her husband, imploring him to stay. Then she hears a soft voice trying to comfort her – a lone passerby who turns out to be Abraham Lincoln. Deeming himself the last casualty of the war, he stands alone as the last man on the road. He quotes a line from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar:

Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear,
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.

Julius Caesar, Act 5, Scene 2, 4–8^[1]

Frightened, Lavinia backs away, but accepts her fate and runs to join her husband, disappearing into the mist.

Closing narration

Incident on a dirt road during the month of April, the year 1865. As we've already pointed out, it's a road that won't be found on a map, but it's one of many that lead in and out of the Twilight Zone.

Cast

James Gregory as The Sergeant
Joanne Linville as Lavinia Godwin
Warren Kemmerling as Jud Godwin
Rex Holman as Charlie Constable
David Garcia as Union Lieutenant
Austin Green as Abraham Lincoln

Episode notes

The traditional folk song "Black Is the Color (Of My True Love's Hair)" is featured prominently throughout this episode.

Elements of the episode are re-made in an episode of the 2002 revival named, "Homecoming". In this episode, a soldier returns from Iraq to repair his relationship with his son. We find out that the soldier is dead.

The closing titles image is of the road upon which the eponymous passersby walk.

The radio adaptation of this episode starred Morgan Brittany as Lavinia.

References

DeVoe, Bill. (2008). Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-136-0
Grams, Martin. (2008). The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703310-9-0

External links

^ Mowat 2004, p. 80.

[FOOTNOTEMowat200480-1] Mowat 2004, p. 80.

[1]

v t e The Twilight Zone (1959) episodes
Season 1	"Where Is Everybody?" "One for the Angels" "Mr. Denton on Doomsday" "The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine" "Walking Distance" "Escape Clause" "The Lonely" "Time Enough at Last" "Perchance to Dream" "Judgment Night" "And When the Sky Was Opened" "What You Need" "The Four of Us Are Dying" "Third from the Sun" "I Shot an Arrow into the Air" "The Hitch-Hiker" "The Fever" "The Last Flight" "The Purple Testament" "Elegy" "Mirror Image" "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" "A World of Difference" "Long Live Walter Jameson" "People Are Alike All Over" "Execution" "The Big Tall Wish" "A Nice Place to Visit" "Nightmare as a Child" "A Stop at Willoughby" "The Chaser" "A Passage for Trumpet" "Mr. Bevis" "The After Hours" "The Mighty Casey" "A World of His Own"
Season 2	"King Nine Will Not Return" "The Man in the Bottle" "Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room" "A Thing About Machines" "The Howling Man" "Eye of the Beholder" "Nick of Time" "The Lateness of the Hour" "The Trouble with Templeton" "A Most Unusual Camera" "The Night of the Meek" "Dust" "Back There" "The Whole Truth" "The Invaders" "A Penny for Your Thoughts" "Twenty Two" "The Odyssey of Flight 33" "Mr. Dingle, the Strong" "Static" "The Prime Mover" "Long Distance Call" "A Hundred Yards Over the Rim" "The Rip Van Winkle Caper" "The Silence" "Shadow Play" "The Mind and the Matter" "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" "The Obsolete Man"
Season 3	"Two" "The Arrival" "The Shelter" "The Passersby" "A Game of Pool" "The Mirror" "The Grave" "It's a Good Life" "Deaths-Head Revisited" "The Midnight Sun" "Still Valley" "The Jungle" "Once Upon a Time" "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" "A Quality of Mercy" "Nothing in the Dark" "One More Pallbearer" "Dead Man's Shoes" "The Hunt" "Showdown with Rance McGrew" "Kick the Can" "A Piano in the House" "The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank" "To Serve Man" "The Fugitive" "Little Girl Lost" "Person or Persons Unknown" "The Little People" "Four O'Clock" "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby" "The Trade-Ins" "The Gift" "The Dummy" "Young Man's Fancy" "I Sing the Body Electric" "Cavender Is Coming" "The Changing of the Guard"
Season 4	"In His Image" "The Thirty-Fathom Grave" "Valley of the Shadow" "He's Alive" "Mute" "Death Ship" "Jess-Belle" "Miniature" "Printer's Devil" "No Time Like the Past" "The Parallel" "I Dream of Genie" "The New Exhibit" "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville" "The Incredible World of Horace Ford" "On Thursday We Leave for Home" "Passage on the Lady Anne" "The Bard"
Season 5	"In Praise of Pip" "Steel" "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" "A Kind of a Stopwatch" "The Last Night of a Jockey" "Living Doll" "The Old Man in the Cave" "Uncle Simon" "Probe 7, Over and Out" "The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms" "A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain" "Ninety Years Without Slumbering" "Ring-a-Ding Girl" "You Drive" "The Long Morrow" "The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross" "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" "Black Leather Jackets" "Night Call" "From Agnes—With Love" "Spur of the Moment" "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" "Queen of the Nile" "What's in the Box" "The Masks" "I Am the Night—Color Me Black" "Sounds and Silences" "Caesar and Me" "The Jeopardy Room" "Stopover in a Quiet Town" "The Encounter" "Mr. Garrity and the Graves" "The Brain Center at Whipple's" "Come Wander with Me" "The Fear" "The Bewitchin' Pool"