“Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts...” (John Steinbeck, brainyquote.com) Fear greatly corrupts the peace and civility in a town in the Twilight Zone. The Twilight Zone is a TV show from the 1960s, composed of separate short stories. This is a very unique show that touches on the fatal flaws of all humans, where most shows exaggerate the admirable characteristics of humans. In The Twilight Zone, there is a short story called, “Monsters Are Due On Maple Street,” by Rod Serling, where characters continuously search for a scapegoat, led by suspicion and fear. In, “Monsters Are Due On Maple Street,” the author discusses the evil weapons of humanity, including scapegoating and suspicion. These two weapons of humanity lead to the destruction of civility on Maple Street, as neighbors turn on one another. Suspicion is one of the dangerous weapons of humanity. In this scene, a peculiar meteor like object flew over Maple Street, causing all of the power to go out. A young boy, Tommy, presents the idea that aliens are behind this. “‘They sent four people...who looked just like humans… but they weren’t.’ There’s a quiet laughter at this...that comes from a desperate attempt to lighten the atmosphere. The neighbors look at one another...concerned,” (Serling, pg. 5,6). This quote shows that the crowd is starting to become suspicious of one another. The crowd is panicked and willing to believe anything, even though there is no proof saying that someone is an alien. Tommy declares that one of the families that live on Maple Street are aliens. The crowd now believes that someone isn’t who they say they are, just because a young boy decided that that was the only logical explanation. The suspicion is shattering the neighbors’ trust in each other. This may cause neighbors to turn on each other. In this scene, one of the neighbors, Les Goodman, tries to start his car, because no one else’s cars are working. “He stops suddenly as behind him…the car engine starts up all by itself...The crowd...continues to ask questions in an air of accusation,” (Serling, pg. 6,7). These stage directions show that when Les’s car starts, the crowd becomes immediately suspicious of Les. The crowd becomes
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.
The plot is unrealistic in “The Monsters are due on Maple Street” because, the power does not just go off without storm presence, cars do not just start by themselves, the Aliens are not real. First things first. Look here. “The Monsters are due on Maple Street” is all about the local town people’s power and electronics going out. They start to panic when Tommy starts talking about the Aliens. Steve and Les Goodman cars starts by themselves. The town people get violent. The plot is unrealistic unrealistic in “The Monsters are due on Maple Street.” They also start accusing each other and in the end someone ends up dead. I believe this plot is unrealistic because the
Wow! One of the best stories ever created! The story is called The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street by Rod Serling. What he was trying to say in the story is humans have flaws. The two flaws were prejudice and suspicion that was in the story. The flaws that were prejudice and suspicion are constantly demonstrated throughout the story. The other types of flaws that can be found are scapegoat, attitudes, and there are weapons that are simply thoughts . . . to be found only in the minds of people, but it was harder to find so prejudice and suspicion are the easiest for some people.
Do you think fear can kill? “For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own - for the children and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to The Twilight Zone” (“Rod”). In 1959, one of the most popular television series was The Twilight Zone, wrote and produced by Rod Serling. The series includes many tales and adventures that are very thought provoking. The Twilight Zone highlights the tragedies during the 1950’s, specifically in the episode, “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street”. The Twilight Zone contains five seasons but only thirty-six of the episodes were during the 1950’s and 1960’s, and were based on fear and catastrophe. The later episodes of the 1960’s reflected the catastrophes in the 1950’s. In The Twilight Zone episode, “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street”, the events display tragedies of the 1950’s, like the Red Scare, McCarthyism, and the Space Race.
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.
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.
“ Click.” The power goes off on maple street. Midday the power suddenly goes off after a meteor looking thing flies over. As the power goes off on maple street everyone comes outside to see what happened. Nothing was working there were no cars,phones,radios,and no lights working. Les Goodman tries to start his car but it doesn’t work so he starts walking towards the people his car starts up by itself since everyone thought someone on maple street was a alien they all started blaming Les Goodman for everything that had happen. The plot is realistic in “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street”because power goes off in real life,people do blame other people,and phones can stop working or go dead.
In the teleplay “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” by Rod Serling, aliens shut down the power and create chaos on Maple Street. Lights go off in people’s houses and neighbors no longer trust each other. Through the action, the author conveys fear and suspicion.
Have you ever heard of aliens landing on Earth and turning all the power off on one street? Well on “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” they do. It all starts one day when everybody was having a good time outside doing yard work and playing. Then, out of nowhere a HUGE meteor passes overhead. After that all the power goes out even the cars and radios. A fourteen year old boy, Tommy, says that the meteor was a alien space ship, and that there are four aliens among them that look just like humans. After a few hours everybody starts accusing each other, fighting, and shooting each other. Then we (the readers) find out that it was aliens all along, but they never got off the spaceship. They just turned
The human mind makes its perception off of the world around it. It indicates the good and evil from the past and the future which still lies in the dark. It is not told who will come to power and how will the system be run. The authority holds human rights in one hand and a mystery in the other. Humans fear the mystery for it is unknown and the darkness that lays ahead.
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
In the Teleplay, “The monster are due on maple street”, the neighbors were at first peaceful but an unusual event changed the whole thing into chaos. The author made this play like this because he wants us to learn and he wants to remind us about human flaws. Throughout the play autor showed many ways a human can interpret something without having any evidence, Which leads to more fear and suspicion.