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The Making Of A Slut And Naomi Wolf's The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street

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Why is it a person’s natural reaction to fear and reject what they can’t understand? In Naomi Wolf’s “The Making of a Slut” and Rod Serling’s “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” we consider the nature of humans and their need to alienate what they don’t understand. In “The Making of a Slut”, Dinah was constantly made out to be a “bad girl” due to her defying the socially acceptable way girls acted. The girls had to conform to society’s standards of women; wearing what was deemed ‘appropriate clothes’ and only hanging out with other girls. Dinah chose to wear revealing cloths and “show herself off” as well as having mostly male friends defying the social standard. Dinah was alienated and immediately labeled a “slut” and others who …show more content…

However, deep down Dinah was like any normal person; she aspired about wanting to be a dancer and she had the will to pursue that desired. Yet, people never saw that side of her due to their predisposed label of her. Despite this label however, Dinah still tried to be whom she believed she was. Naomi Wolf states that “in our group Dinah became the slut. She found that role-or rather, it found her, and she did not deign to fight it. She put it on with dignity” (317). Despite what everyone thought of her, Dinah didn’t care because she knew who she was. Dinah knew she wasn’t a slut and that she didn’t have to give up on being herself because of societies fears. So, despite the ridicule and the shame of others brought her through rumors and lies Dinah held her head high and let others live with their understanding about why she acts the way she does despite it being false. It was people's lack of understanding that lead them to label Dinah. It wasn’t that they necessarily feared her as a person, but rather the fact she refused to act like other girls which made people uneasy. When fear arises, everyone takes safety in forming groups to “point the finger” at another to make sense of their lack of understanding. This was just the case in Rod Serling’s “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street.” A lack of understanding leads to panic and its panic that begets fear, this was the cause of the chaos that occurred in Rod Serling’s “The

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