Mass Hysteria In The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street

The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” is a screenplay by Rod Serling that was televised as part of the Twilight Zone television series, a popular series that began in 1959 and is still televised today. After reading and then watching the selection, I prefer the teleplay over the episode.

In both versions there are many differences and few similarities. Rod Serling, changed updates to relate time period to a modern theme. "The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street" 1960 version is black and white and the 2002 version is in color. The 1960 version is less violent how the 2002 version is very violent. The characters change for looking and dressing alike to look nothing alike in the 1960 episode everyone is white fancy as where the 2002 episode has people who don’t care who they look like and they don’t have the same skin color.

“Sheer mayhem breaks out, neighbor battling neighbor, grabbing for rifles, bricks, even the hammer from Pete Van Horn’s body,” (Serling, page 15). This describes the final scene of a provocative short story in The Twilight Zone. The Twilight Zone is a televised show set in the 1960s with short episodes in no specific order. These stories all have the darkest of themes to share about humanity’s true nature. In the short story, “Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” by Rod Serling, the author contributes to the theme that prejudice and scapegoating are weapons of humanity. When the idea of prejudice first kicks in, Maple Street gets a little taste of madness.

Fear is not only a feeling but a parasite that lingers in your mind. The neighbors in “Monsters are due on Maple Street” were put to the test by hidden military agents. These agents observed everyone’s response to what felt like a bomb exploding nearby, which led to electrical complications. Everyone began brainstorming reasons to what happened; while others resorted to making aggressive accusations. Through its effective rendering of mise-en-scene, camera movement, and lighting; "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street" conveys you shouldn't let fear consume you to the point that you're unable to make rational conclusions.

“Over 127,000 United States citizens were imprisoned during World War II. Their crime? Being of Japanese ancestry”(History par.1) all because people were scared which is a form of mass hysteria. Mass Hysteria is the cause of many panics across the world such as in Le Roy High School in New York where multiple girls suffered a twitch disorder much like tourettes and then in Tanzania when villages west of Lake Victoria experienced an epidemic of laughing and crying. Similar outbreaks have been reported in schools in europe and the US”(Waller par. 2). Most cases of mass hysteria all have different causes and there are three which are most common. Throughout history, mass hysteria has been caused by fear, attention and rumors, and even a psychic contagion.

Le Rory, NY is a small town in upstate New York and in 2012 a "mysterious illness" stuck teenagers in the town. This "mysterious illness" was allegedly some sort of tourette's. Tourette's is a neurological disorder involving repeated involuntary movements, and tics ( U.S. Nat'l Library of Medicine). However tourette's is not contagious, and people in the town of LeRory were having the same symptoms as others. Neurologists were baffled and, the town became furious. The townspeople started to blame the high school for not being able to stop this. Parents stated to feel as if their children were not safe in the school. This is an example of mass hysteria, mass hysteria is a condition affecting a group of persons, characterized by excitement or

Boom!! Pete’s dead. Charlie shot Pete. Pete was walking around seeing if everybody's power is off. Pete was walking In the shadow charlie got scared he thought Pete was a alien. This story is not realistic because Charlie shot Pete he said he thought he was a alien. Less Goodman’s car stared out of nowhere. A meteor flew overhead they thought it was a spaceship.

One thing that people do when they do not know a certain objective is that they might start to get enraged or frightened and they can start to turn very violent. The show called The Twilight Zone, is a series of short stories that follow different groups of people that face different problems. They all come back to the main theme that humans are really monsters. In the short story, Monsters are Due on Maple Street by Rod Serling a group of people soon find out that the power is cut and they are suspicious that an alien is behind this. It shows two weapons of humanity which are suspicion and scapegoating. There are some ways that suspicion led the humans to turn on each other and how it is shown to go against humans.

Hysteria has been seen throughout history, but what dictates the outcome is how the community reacts. Hysteria can be defined as uncontrollable emotion among a group of people. It has been depicted throughout human history, which can be seen during the the Cold War, 9/11, and terrorist threats. The Crucible evidently shows how hysteria leads to the disunification of a community through the human obsession of reputation, the Puritan lack of respect for privacy, and human anger.

What if someone you knew was not who they were? What if they were aliens or terrorists? That’s what happens in the 1960 and the 2003 version of Rod Serling’5s teleplay. In the 1960 version the neighbors are accusing each other of being aliens and taking away each other’s power from their houses and cars. While in the 2003 version they think terrorists are doing this from the recent 9/11. This shows that fear of the unknown can cause people to turn on each other.

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you,” profoundly stated by Friedrich Nietzsche (goodreads.com). Friedrich Nietzsche’s lecture is portrayed to be true in The Twilight Zone. The Twilight Zone is a television series from the 1960s which are all short dark stories that in the end, shed light on the flaws of humanity. The short story, “Monsters are Due on Maple Street” by Rod Serling, is a science fiction story that shows prejudice and thoughts as weapons of humanity. Prejudice and thoughts are meant to destroy humans. Many signs of prejudice, are shown to destroy the tiny little subdivision, of Maple Street.

Mass Hysteria is strong reactions by groups of people based on misunderstood facts, suggestions, imagined stimuli, or blindly following a false authority. The impacts of mass hysteria on a society can be damaging and deadly, not only physically, but emotionally too. The Crucible by Arthur Miller is about the Salem Witch Trials in 1692. During the Salem Witch Trials, several girls in Salem, Massachusetts accused multiple people in and around the town of being witches. Being Puritan and wanting to please God, the community immediately started trials for the accused people. As a result of the trials, twenty people lost their lives. Mass Hysteria leads to rash conclusions based on few reliable facts; The Crucible by Arthur Miller, the 2014 Ebola outbreak, and allegations that vaccinations can cause permanent challenges, such as autism, are all examples of mass hysteria.

In the teleplay “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” by Rod Serling Steve and Charlie are strong characters who both believe they are doing the right thing to protect their neighborhood. Steve is a person who is a leader, he is the one who tries to calm everyone down. Charlie is the opposite of Steve he is very quick to to judge he is also the one who who acts before he thinks as you will learn later in the story. In the story the reader learns that the theme is “Prejudice can kill and suspicion can destroy” This quote is important to the story because it shows that that the mind of men can be quick to judge and prove to be lethal which at the end could kill.

In the drama, ¨The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street¨ by Rod Serling, the plot is advanced by the importance of the events and characters’ actions by giving it interest and dimension. Tommy tells everyone about the monsters/aliens, but nobody believes him;¨They don't want us to leave.That's why they shut everything off,¨Tommy explains about the aliens, but no one believed him but soon after, it sparked the cause of the weird things happening.Charlie killed Pete Van Horn,¨You killed him, Charlie. You shot him dead!¨Charlie grabbed the gun and shot it at a dark figure that turned out to be Pete Van Horn, after that they begin to suspect Charlie is the monster. They all blame each other more intensely,¨I tell you, it's the kid.¨As the stress

This is one example of many about mass hysteria, and it talks about how mass hysteria affected a school in Okongo. Throughout the whole hysteria many girls in the school were affected. Examples of what happened to girls are severe headaches, speaking different languages, and many other things(itamalo 2017). “Some pupils, mostly girls, exhibited strange behaviour such as speaking in what sounded like a strange language when the episodes started on Friday last week”(itamalo 2017). This quote shows how mass hysteria affected this town and school, it also supports that fact that mass hysteria is still alive today and can spread easily if not treated in the right way. This quote also shows the intensity that can come from mass hysteria, and that it is not to be played around with it can be very serious and life threatening. Also without the technology of a