Plot
Keith Barnes is an obnoxious teenager aboard an airplane, whose love of his radio annoys those around him. A lightning storm, however, transforms his Walkman into a telepathic tuning device. He begins to hear the voices of all the people around him in the plane. And then he finds out that the man sitting next to him, a Mr. Williams, may be carrying a bomb.
It turns out that Mr. Williams is distraught over the death of his wife and child in a similar airplane, due to the negligence of an indifferent airline. As revenge, and a way of teaching the airline how to be more careful, he intends to destroy the plane with a bomb. Keith, knowing his plan after reading his mind, tries to talk him out of it. Mr. Williams cannot understand how Keith knows his plot, but is still determined to go through with it.
Mr. Williams tries to put his plan into effect, frightening the passengers. Keith manages to sneak up behind him and put the headphones over his ears. Hearing the pleading thoughts of the other passengers, especially one that a young man has a daughter about his daughter's age when she died, Mr. Williams is filled with remorse and he relents. As Mr. Williams is taken away, however, he accidentally steps on Keith's radio and crushes it.
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Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“Those blessed structures, plot and rhyme—
why are they no help to me now
I want to make
something imagined, not recalled?”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
“But, when to Sin our byast Nature leans,
The careful Devil is still at hand with means;
And providently Pimps for ill desires:
The Good Old Cause, reviv’d, a Plot requires,
Plots, true or false, are necessary things,
To raise up Common-wealths and ruine Kings.”
—John Dryden (1631–1700)
“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)